


Lover

by RavenHawk (Janey253)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Eustass Kid/Nami, Minor Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Portgas D. Ace, Minor Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law, Minor Roronoa Zoro/Vinsmoke Sanji, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27590359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janey253/pseuds/RavenHawk
Summary: Sometimes working out whether you could spend the rest of your life bound to someone is a lot of work, riddled with compromises and misunderstandings. Sometimes it's natural.Kaku finds that it's natural to fall in love with Lucci, but that Lucci is a lot of work, that compromises are expected but not often given, and that misunderstandings are really his own fault.He also knows that he'd still never find a better partner to spend the rest of his life with.
Relationships: Eustass Kid/Nami, Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Portgas D. Ace, Kaku/Rob Lucci, Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law, Roronoa Zoro/Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	1. Blueno's Bar

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfiction that I've written (instead of just reading them) for over ten years. I'm still getting used to writing again, so forgive me if anything feels clunky. I have it drafted to be around four chapters long but that might change.
> 
> For me this was an opportunity to practice character writing again before I started writing anything longer, and for all that Water 7 is one of the best One Piece arcs, Lucci and Kaku don't get enough love so this is where I am for now. Inspired by a couple of songs on Taylor Swift's album, Lover.
> 
> Also, since I was writing this on the 11th, happy belated birthday to Zoro.
> 
> Only edited by me, so any mistakes are my own.
> 
> I do not own One Piece or any of the characters represented herein.

The soft thrum of the guitar floated through the open window of the lodge window, along with the muted chatter of guests finding their seats. 

Kaku knew from approving the final layout last night that the white picnic chairs had been arranged in two neat sections facing the white arch that was the altar. Blueno and Sanji had been given the less than enviable task of making sure that the florist set up the display properly, bouquets of orange and white lilies and purple roses with dashes of green along the aisle and a complicated arrangement of roses around the altar. 

His own best man was currently sprawled on the couch behind him, laughing at a particularly crude joke that Kidd had made about the wedding night. Franky was out looking after the catering and alcohol deliveries, they should have come in last night but bad weather on the coast had delayed Sanji’s seafood, and Zoro couldn’t be trusted to find his way to the kitchen for the delivery and then back before the ceremony.

Kaku glanced nervously at the mirror again and flattened the burnt orange tie he was wearing. His suit was white, with a white waist-coat and an orange pocket square. His boutonniere was still carefully tucked away in the fridge but was a white calla lily, wrapped in purple ribbon. Each of his groomsmen were similarly dressed in white three-piece suits but with black ties and orange rose boutonnieres.

It seemed a little strange that the months of preparation were finally at an end. He couldn’t really decide what the most difficult aspect to organise had been. The venue had taken a long time to settle on, Kaku had wanted somewhere removed from the rush of his fiancé’s everyday life. The issue had been finding somewhere where their guests could reasonably stay the weekend with them, so they didn’t need to make sure that the location was accessible by public transport.

The lodge they had settled on was thirty-five minutes from Inverness, set deep in the Scottish Highlands, and had forty-seven double rooms set across three buildings which was enough to home their closest and most important guests. The only issue was that by the time they had agreed on the venue, the only available autumn Saturday had been in eight months and was so close to the start of winter that Kaku was expecting snow over the weekend.

The air was already bitterly cold.

In consideration of this, the suits for both the grooms and their wedding party were made of wool and the wedding ceremony was planned to take less than an hour. The reception was being held in the large ballroom and dining room which were warmed by two large wood fireplaces, and dinner was a hearty entrée of seafood pasta, alternating plates of chicken and beef for mains and mini apple pies, waffles and chocolate mousse for dessert. Not to mention a truly decadent chocolate and raspberry coulis wedding cake that Kaku had only glanced the evening before.

After the venue had been chosen, there was the issue of the menu (which had been heavily contested by Sanji), the issue of the open bar (open bar for the normal person had a different meaning when discussing any arrangements for the required quantity and variety with Zoro, Blueno or Nami), then suits, the cake, the playlist (at least they had agreed on having a live band), the guest list. At some point the last eight months had become a task of checking off one hurdle at a time, and then coming back to smooth over the issues that arose.

Of course, all of that paled beside the prospect of spending the rest of his life committed to his fiancé, his best friend. 

His lover.

~ ~ ~

Blueno’s Bar was a speakeasy that was tucked between a pizza parlour and a block of tiny offices, near the docks at the south end of Wall Street. It was always dim inside, with most of the light coming from behind the bar, the rest from warmly lit chandeliers that hung over the seven booths. It had a luxurious 1920’s meets industrial feel that was reminiscent of the Prohibition, but paid homage to the enormous navy ships that had been built during World War I in the docks a few streets down. 

Behind the bar, in pride of place, was a scale replica of a Dreadnought battleship with a brass name plate that read “USS Pluton”. Blueno was happy to tell anyone who asked that it was believed to be the most dangerous sea weapon ever crafted, but that it had been lost during the Great War and that the plans for the vessel were some of the most heavily sought after in the world. Even his model was only based on a few scant photographs, though he had meticulously assembled the battleship as accurately as he could.

When Kaku had first met Blueno, he had been slightly intimidated. At 193 centimetres tall, it was unusual for him to feel dwarfed by anyone but Blueno was simultaneously significantly taller and much more muscular than Kaku could ever dream of being. His dark hair had been styled into a 1950’s jelly roll and his facial hair was trimmed with a precision that Kaku was slightly jealous of. He had quickly learnt that the man had a quick sense of humour but did not tolerate fools. One of his co-workers had the misfortune of finding out that his brawn wasn’t just for show when he had one too many of the bar’s famous Old-Fashioneds and was shown the door.

He had been nervous coming back to the bar after his first visit, but the promise of good whisky in a quiet bar that was five minutes from his hectic job and seven from the subway was too tempting. It turned out that Blueno did not forget a face, but he did forgive Kaku’s poor choice of company.

After that it had been easy to return to the bar for a drink (or several) after a long week. Blueno was not a conversationalist, but he knew enough about the comings and goings of Wall Street to sympathise when an investment of Kaku’s took an unexpected bad turn or when his manager was too happy to take a cut of Kaku’s bonuses. 

In turn, Kaku had learnt that Blueno had come to New York from London to open a bar but that his first attempt, Cipher Pol 9, in a trendy area in Brooklyn had not gone well. Too many Instagram models and Tik Tok stars. He also found that his hair styles varied but that the man wore heavily slicked hair from the 50’s, despite being impeccably dressed in a black suit and tie. Blueno blamed it on a twin cowlick that, if not tamed, naturally curled his hair up like bull’s horns. He also travelled so frequently that it was almost as if he could simply open a door to his destination, travel there and return without the hassle of transport or jetlag.

The benefit of this, of course, was that suddenly Kaku had a world of first-class whisky at his fingertips. It made his work ever so slightly more tolerable. 

And if anyone ever suggested that he had a problem with alcohol, then he had learnt from the best.

He introduced Zoro to Blueno’s Bar the first time that he was back in the country after Kaku had discovered the speakeasy. As a general rule, Kaku avoided taking Zoro out drinking (he drank too much and rarely had the spare cash to chip in a round) but on the back of a nationally ranked win in kendo, it seemed fair. Zoro had appreciated the selection of chilled sake available and the dark atmosphere. Enough so that the first evening they had spent together at Blueno’s was one of only six evenings they had been out drinking together where the night hadn’t ended in a brawl. Not that Zoro was, overly, violent. It was just that, with a scar that bisected his eye and a perpetual frown, people tended to say things to Zoro, or around him, that earnt them a punch in the face.

It had been a pleasant evening. Zoro was happy to talk quietly about his kendo achievements, which made Kaku regret having to give up the sport in university after spending a decade competing alongside his friend. He was even content enough not to make any remarks about how Kaku had “sold his dreams” by becoming a stock broker, and only made one comment that suggested he should stab the asshole who had the desk next to his with a letter opener the next time he tried to copy his trades.

The truth was, Kaku wasn’t entirely sure he had any dreams that he had committed to yet that he could have sold, and at twenty-two years old and barely out of university, he kind of felt like Zoro was the weird one for having a dream he was so dedicated to. 

But that was neither here or there.

Over the next two years, Blueno’s became Kaku’s regular bar for the evenings after work when he didn’t finish close to midnight. 

Zoro joined him for nights when he was in the city in between matches and training sessions with his eccentric German sword master. It was also the venue for Zoro’s twenty-third birthday, one cold November night. It was the first time Kaku met Luffy – a hyperactive young man with a straw hat who apparently was making a Twitch career out of becoming king of the pirates in a MMORPG Kaku had never heard of. 

With Luffy came his older brothers Ace - a fire fighter with a gorgeous smattering of freckles and a smirk that had made Kaku blush; and Sabo - a fiery blond working for a senator with such radical political views that he had caused a heated argument with Blueno that had almost resulted in a lifetime ban from the bar. There was also Usopp - a freelance artist working through an engineering degree, Nami - one of the most sought-after wedding planners in the city, and Chopper, a young doctor working in the emergency room of a private hospital on the Upper East Side.

A few months after the party, it also became the venue for one of Kaku’s most disastrous first dates. Kaku couldn’t remember his name now, but they had met through a work function and, at the time, he had seemed capable of stringing two sentences together and was easy on the eyes. The evening had started with (Jackson?) correcting Blueno on the correct way to make a Manhattan and had ended with (Joshua?) getting his stomach pumped because he had forgotten which of the two drinks he was bringing back to their table was roofied. 

There was not a second date.

Kaku found Nami in one of the booths on a Friday afternoon in May and they bonded over their love of a good Scottish Whisky, neat, and their mutual dislike of the stock market. It turned out that Nami had completed an accounting degree, but had gone into wedding planning instead because she could earn the same amount of money while shopping and “her good looks were wasted in an office anyway”.

It also eventuated that Nami could, and would happily, drink as much as Zoro without batting an eyelid, which was a fact that Kaku wished he had noticed at Zoro’s birthday before he had offered to pay for her drinks. So, while she also became an occasional companion at Blueno’s, he made a careful point never to invite her. This meant he could escape with only paying for around three quarters of the drinks they had, rather than the full tab. It was a delicate, if unspoken, agreement.

It was through Nami that Kaku found out that Ace was in an extremely committed relationship with a fashion designer who was fairly open-minded about Ace’s rampant flirting. While it was slightly disappointing, Kaku could admit that he probably wasn’t equipped to handle Ace’s impulsiveness on a daily basis. It was only when he got home and hung up his Marco Phoenix suit that he paused to wonder what it would be like to have a relationship with someone who routinely dressed red carpet celebrities.

Kaku did eventually meet the infamous Marco, at a paintball party for Luffy’s twenty-third birthday almost a year later, and found him remarkably down to earth next to Ace. He also discovered that Usopp had possibly the most scarily accurate aim of any person he had the misfortune of opposing in any game involving a gun, and he ended up carrying home the painful bruises and a limp as proof of that.

The limp had faded but Kaku still had a pronounced and painful bruise on his collarbone two weeks later when he entered Blueno’s Bar after a frustrating day at work. The bar was quiet for a Friday evening, but with the warmer weather many patrons had been drawn out into the parks instead.

Blueno looked up from behind the bar when he entered and nodded in greeting. Kaku’s cursory glance around the bar told him that Nami was not present, though she had texted earlier that day and suggested that she hoped to finish early with her newest clients, a young couple who had been dating since high school but were hoping for a wedding in Long Island. Family money apparently.

There was a small group in one of the booths, either friends or co-workers, who were relaxed and laughing over a plate of fries. There was also a pair of women who looked like they were in the city on holiday in another of the booths, and two other men who appeared as though they had just finished their days on Wall Street towards the end of the bar. A quiet but not unusual crowd.

That is, if Kaku dismissed the man sitting opposite Blueno at the bar. He was seated with his back to the door, dressed in a quality black suit shirt that stretched attractively over his chest and shoulders and was rolled up to just below his elbows, revealing a heavy gold watch on his left wrist. His hair was jet black and was tied into a neat ponytail that reached just past his shoulders.

The atmosphere in the bar was charged, but neither Blueno or his guest seemed to notice, or they chose not to pay it any mind. Perhaps the stranger was used to the heated looks that the women in the booth were sending him. Whatever the case was, it barely concerned Kaku.

What did concern Kaku was whether Blueno could make him a cocktail that would make him forget that he wanted to beat one of the new graduates with a keyboard until they took the initiative to Google how to create a pivot table rather than email him to do it for them for the fifteenth time.

Kaku slipped into one of the bar seats, a few seats down from Blueno and his stranger, and folded his suit jacket over the back of the chair. Blueno spared him a glance before he turned to grab three bottles off the back wall and an orange from the mini fridge below the bar, all the while continuing his muted conversation. Kaku sent him a soft smile that was probably missed and then pulled his phone out of his pocket to turn off notifications for his work email for the weekend. 

There was a message from Nami, she had secured a date with a lawyer who had been weekending near one of the potential wedding venues and was hoping to enjoy Sunday on his yacht. So evidently, he would not be seeing her that evening. Which was good for his wallet but meant that he would have to find another person to complain about Callum’s ineptitude to.

And Blueno appeared to be out of the question, as he placed a tall glass in front of Kaku with two cherries and an orange wedge perched over the peachy coloured drink, and then returned to his conversation further down the bar with the raven-haired man. The drink made up for it, it was strong with a hint of almonds, and Kaku couldn’t really begrudge anything that came with maraschino cherries. 

He chanced another look at the man down the bar from him while he sipped his drink. He had aristocratically refined features, with a strong jawline, a straight nose and defined eyebrows. His goatee was trimmed close to his skin with remarkable precision, and Kaku understood a little better why Blueno seemed to take so much care with his facial hair. If Kaku considered Ace good-looking on occasion, this man was classically handsome and it was effortless.

Kaku looked down quickly at the book open in his hands, Unlikely Destinations, when the man made a small movement and suddenly his clear emerald eyes were watching him curiously. It was rude to stare, and Kaku had been raised better than that.

He settled into his seat at the bar, sipping at his drink while he read. The smooth jazz was relaxing and just drowned out the other conversations around him, which was nice as the bar slowly filled when the evening drew on.

At some point, after his first cocktail had been replaced, Kaku looked up to ask one of the other bartenders for a beef slider and a side of chips. The bartender, a man maybe a few years younger than him with mousy brown hair, nodded and scuttled away to the kitchens, dancing around Blueno and the third bartender, who were both busy with the other patrons crowded at the bar.

A man bumped Kaku’s shoulder as he gestured for Blueno, a brunette woman in six-inch heels wrapped under his arm. He glanced down and mumbled an apology between yelling his order across the bar, but Kaku only shrugged and turned back to his book. He looked up again after the couple had moved off and another peachy coloured cocktail was placed in front of him.

“Tie me to the bedpost.”

“What?” Kaku asked, surprised at the man’s forwardness. It had been Blueno who had left the cocktail, but the stranger with the raven hair and emerald eyes that had spoken.

“It’s the name of the cocktail. Is this seat taken?” He asked, sliding into the bar seat next to Kaku without really waiting for a response.

The man’s accent was refined and British and he smelt of woody aromatics that Kaku was sure was a cologne. Kaku blamed sensory overload for his hesitation in responding.

“Yes. I mean no. I mean-” he paused and took a breath, “No, no one is sitting there. Please help yourself.”

“My name is Rob Lucci,” the stranger introduced himself.

Kaku flashed him a soft smile, “Kaku. It’s nice to meet you.”

There was a moments interruption when the bartender returned with his food and Kaku nodded his thanks to him.

“Blueno mentioned that you are a regular here,” Rob stated, though there was a slight rise in his tone that could have, possibly, suggested a question if listening closely enough.

Kaku took it as one anyway, and nodded.

“I guess so, I’ve been coming here for close to two years now, I guess. A colleague at work introduced me, and it’s nice to have somewhere comfortable to relax after a day in the office. Not that I’m here every day,” Kaku paused to reign himself in, though Rob didn’t seem bothered, “Yeah, I’m in here once a week or so. How do you know Blueno?”

Rob shrugged, taking a sip of his cognac.

“We go back a long time, I financed his first bar in London,” he replied casually, as if that sentence answered more questions than it raised.

It did not.

Kaku was suddenly worried that he had grossly mismeasured Rob’s age. He knew that Blueno was almost ten years older than he was and that he had opened the bar in London six years ago. It was still going well apparently, and Blueno only needed to drop in on the manager occasionally to approve menu updates and refurbishments.

“So, you’re from England?” Kaku asked, as if his accent didn’t make that obvious already.

Rob raised an eyebrow at him and Kaku got the distinct impression that he should ask his questions much, much more carefully, lest he actually have his intelligence verbally questioned.

“I still live in London, I’m here on business.”

“What do you do?” Kaku questioned, using the skewer from his drink to stir the ice cubes.

“I own a couple of hotels, among other things,” Rob waved him off, as if the details were insignificant, “what about you?”

Kaku wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but something in Rob’s short answers made him want to impress him. Unfortunately, it was hard to muster the enthusiasm for his job that would enable him to do that.

Instead he shrugged, “I work in the stock market as an advisor. I was a broker, but I guess it’s a promotion?”

Rob seemed to sense that it wasn’t a terribly interesting conversation to have and glanced instead at the backpack Kaku had at his feet, and then at the plate of food that was still sitting by Kaku’s elbow.

Out of habit, and politeness that had been drilled into him by his parents, Kaku slid the plate into the space between them on the bar and took one of the sliders.

“Thank you. What were you reading?” Rob asked, taking a few chips and placing them on a napkin in front of himself.

Kaku smiled more widely and happily launched into a description of the novel he was reading, an autobiography slash travel book that described the difficulties of setting up a small but ultimately successful business as well as some unique and beautiful destinations around the world.

Kaku had personally never left the United States, he had worked all the way through university so the furthest he had travelled while studying was for maybe a week during Spring Break to the beach. Now he had the money to travel internationally, but it felt like he would never be able to take the time off to do so.

In fact, the passport that he had optimistically ordered when he turned eighteen was now a mere four years away from renewal and had only been used once as identification when he lost his driver’s licence.

Rob on the other hand was just as well travelled as Blueno, if not more, so simply by virtue of having stayed in his destinations longer. He had spent a year on exchange during his university studies in business and economics, six months in Australia and six months in Japan.

He said that he had chosen Australia in part to see what a blue sky was, only to discover that the heat of summer was completely unbearable and his hair did not handle humidity very well. Japan was a logical move for his degree, as one of the largest economies in the world, but he had been charmed by the culture and had been learning the language since he graduated.

Which was only seven years ago, which Kaku was slightly relieved to find out.

Rob didn’t talk a lot, he seemed to prefer to sit and listen to Kaku, but he would add into the conversation quiet stories about hiking through Peru to Machu Picchu, black water rafting with glow worms in New Zealand, skiing in Canada. He had gotten lost in Paris when he was twenty and ended up circling Notre Dame looking for the Louvre while it poured with rain. He had sky dived in Austria over perfect sheets of white snow, and had spent an entire day on the back of a moped while exploring the city of Hanoi.

Kaku desperately wanted his life. Or maybe he just wanted to have been there for his adventures, and, while they were all amazing, incredible areas of the world that he desperately wanted to visit, it seemed like a lot of Rob’s journeys were made on his own and that seemed a little lonely. 

But that could very well have been wishful thinking because Rob seemed perfectly content talking about the white sand and coloured coral reefs in Fiji that he had jet skied to. 

Kaku, however, was somewhat distracted thinking about Rob’s skin. 

He imagined he was lucky and that his creamy skin would probably tan beautifully under the Fijian sun. Unlike Kaku’s, which would burn and then peel if he didn’t layer on sunscreen, leaving behind brown freckles on his shoulders which would last two days before disappearing.

It seemed that the only dream destination that Kaku had that Rob hadn’t already been to, or somewhere close to, was Africa. 

He laughed, not unkindly, when Kaku mentioned that he loved giraffes.

His years in puberty were a little less kind than most boy’s. His growth spurt had taken him from being one of the shortest boys in the class to almost his full adult height over one summer, and it took him a very long time before he stopped knocking his extremities on staircase banisters or doorways. 

At some point it became a running joke with his classmates to time how long it took him to clamber to his feet after he had, inevitably, fallen over them to the ground. 

Like a new born giraffe.

The only place in high school that he showed any form of coordination was during kendo practice after school four days a week. If he didn’t then Zoro would have simply left him in the dust.

Somehow, Kaku ended up telling Lucci both of these stories, about his affinity with giraffes because sometimes it sucks to be tall, and about his best friend, who would one day be the greatest swordsman in the world.

Lucci still laughed at Kaku’s childhood incoordination, but Kaku could hardly fault him. It was years ago and now that his clothes fit normally and he only occasionally bumped into the corner of a desk, it was funnier. He listened intently when he spoke about Zoro and asked a few considered questions that indicated at least a passable understanding of the sport.

“Well,” Rob chuckled, his smirk indicating that he was still thinking about Kaku as a lanky teenager with slightly too red hair and flailing limbs, “if giraffes are all that important to you, you should definitely visit Africa. I’m hoping that the next time I have a gap in my schedule, I can organise a safari tour.”

It wasn’t an invitation, but when Rob’s intense green eyes lingered on Kaku, Kaku heard one all the same.

The moment was interrupted when Blueno cleared his throat from across the bar.

“It’s closing time, get lost.”

Kaku chuckled but reached for his wallet, bemused that he had somehow lost so much of the evening. He’d have to catch a cab home if it was that late.

Rob was slightly faster, and handed a black card to Blueno.

“Wait, Rob-”

“I prefer Lucci,” Lucci interrupted, waving Blueno off nonchalantly.

“But-” a firm look stopped the rest of Kaku’s complaint and he put his wallet away, “thank you.”

As Blueno walked away to settle their bill, Kaku pulled his suit jacket back on and stooped to pick up his backpack. Lucci watched him with silent intensity, even when one of the waiters stepped up beside him and handed him a black topcoat and leather briefcase.

Blueno came back quickly with the bill, waiting just long enough for Lucci to sign the merchant receipt before disappearing back towards the register to count up. 

“Shall we?” Lucci spoke softly as he made a small sweeping gesture towards the door.

Kaku nodded and began making his way out of the bar. He didn’t jump when a hand settled on the small of his back, but his stomach did break out in butterflies. As he climbed the stairs out of the bar, emerging on the street next to the pizza restaurant that was still serving drunken stragglers, the city still sounded quieter, as if further away than it normally was.

He stopped at the edge of the road while Lucci, completely effortlessly, hailed a cab before turning back to look at Kaku.

Kaku felt giddy, the butterflies still fluttering low in his belly. Somehow this man was interested enough in him to spend the whole evening talking to him. Interested enough to linger even after they had left the bar. Interested enough to be watching him with a sharp, almost predatory gaze.

And maybe he was only in the city for business, so it was unlikely to be a lengthy interest. And maybe that was okay. Maybe it was okay to have a moment, a connection with someone, that burned quickly but brightly.

Kaku reached up, having made a decision, clenched a hand into the open collar of Lucci’s shirt and tugged him down slightly to press his lips together.

Lucci made a pleased noise in the back of his throat, his hand coming up to cup Kaku’s jaw tenderly. The hand that had been on the small of Kaku’s back tugged him in flush against Lucci’s chest as he deepened the kiss.

Lucci smelled overwhelmingly of a woody cologne and tasted of cognac, his lips were full and smooth, and his teeth not overly sharp as they nipped Kaku’s lower lip as he pulled away. Someone had wolf-whistled in the distance and they had lost their cab.

But that was okay too.

Kaku smiled softly, his hands still casually curled into the front of Lucci’s shirt.

“I rent a place on Cornelia Street.”


	2. Cornelia Street

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to anyone actually following this for the long wait, I was a little unsure where I wanted it to go and aspects of the chapter were harder to write than others.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it though!
> 
> Still only edited by myself, so an mistakes are my own.

There was a knock at the door of the dressing room, which made Kid glance up but Zoro was the one who stood. He had a glass of warm sake in one hand that he put down on the side table before he opened the door.

Nami waltzed through the door as soon as it was open, which earnt her an eye roll from Zoro as he closed the door behind her. She was dressed in a floor length purple gown with a white fur stole wrapped around her shoulders and her hair elegantly twisted on top of her head, with a few ringlets tumbling over her shoulders.

She looked stunning.

A fact that did not go unnoticed by Kid, who was on his feet before she could make it further than a few steps into the room.

“Hey gorgeous,” he smirked, wrapping his arms around her waist to pick her up off the ground.

“Oh, put me down you oaf,” Nami huffed, whacking his shoulder gently with her clutch, “I’m not here to see you.”

Kid pouted but lowered her gently back onto the ground, after stealing a quick kiss. Nami smiled up at him, cleaning a smudge of lipstick off his face with the pad of her thumb, before glancing over his shoulder to make eye contact with Kaku.

“You look amazing,” she complimented.

Kaku straightened his jacket again self-consciously and patted down his tie.

“Thank you. How is everything going?” He asked, stepping up to kiss Nami’s cheek.

“Everything is fine. The last of the food arrived an hour ago and Sanji started terrorising the kitchen staff as soon as the florist was finished with the decorations,” Zoro glanced up and smirked proudly at the mention of his spitfire boyfriend, “the photographer is still with Lucci, she’s trying to get some more photos of the groom’s party together before the wedding,” Nami soothed, pouring herself a drink of Zoro’s sake.

“How’s the weather?”

Nami shrugged, “about what we expected. It’s cold but there’s no snow yet, though you might not make it through the ceremony without any. The forecast isn’t severe though and there shouldn’t be issues on the roads.”

“And no one is causing any issues?” Kaku asked, nervously thinking of the engagement party.

Nami shook her head, her earrings jingling quietly, “Ace and Sabo took Luffy horse riding at dawn this morning so he could work off some of his excess party energy.”

“So he’s just going to be hankering for the food after the ceremony?” Zoro asked, mild disapproval colouring his tone.

Nami flicked her hair dismissively at him, “he’s not completely socially inept, and he had a big morning tea.”

Zoro rolled his eyes at her back as Kaku laughed softly, Luffy was a force of nature but he meant well. The issue was that Luffy’s idea of appropriate party behaviour conflicted somewhat spectacularly with Lucci’s, so their interactions could sometimes be a little strained.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Kaku paused, “have you seen Lucci?”

Nami shook her head, “not since last night.”

“I saw him and Sanji out this morning, runnin’ near the lake. It was bloody cold but unless they haven’t come back yet I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Franky joked as he clattered into the room, dropping a plate of cut sandwiches on a table as he knocked the door shut again with his elbow.

Zoro reached over the back of the couch to snag a couple of the sandwich triangles, and then refilled his glass.

“The shit cook brought his frozen feet back to bed ‘bout seven this morning,” he grumbled.

“So he probably still intends to marry you,” Kid smirked, which prompted Nami to toss a cushion at his head.

Kaku chuckled. Lucci had never been a man to do things by halves, and he wasn’t concerned about him getting cold feet the morning of the wedding.

He mostly just wanted someone to confirm that he wasn’t the only one nervously pacing his dressing room.

~ ~ ~

The apartment on Cornelia street was a two-bedroom, third floor walk-up that was bathed in the morning light. The second bedroom had long since been converted into an at-home work out room and office, despite the fact that both Kaku’s gym and office were within walking distance. He had discovered very early after graduating that he didn’t cope very well with housemates, which was why he was willing to sacrifice such a large portion of his income on living on his own.

The whole apartment had been painted an obnoxious shade of white shortly before he moved in, but the light wooden floorboards had seen better years. There was one floorboard in particular that creaked rather impressively every time someone opened the fridge door.

It was six thirty in the morning when the floor board groaned, signalling that Lucci had returned from his morning run and was getting a chilled bottle of water before his shower. 

It had been almost two months since the night at Blueno’s. It wasn’t that Lucci had moved in, in the beginning it had just been nice to wake up with Lucci in his apartment and the almost feverish start to the relationship had dictated that they had spent very few evenings in separate beds. Then it had unfolded that Lucci had been staying in a room in his hotel, while construction and renovation ran every morning from 7am to late and that, despite his best efforts, dust had a way of finding its way into every nook of the place. Kaku had offered after that, until things settled and his build was further along, he could share his apartment.

He hadn’t moved in, because he was living out of a suitcase and still wouldn’t be in New York for long, but on Wednesdays when Kaku picked up Lucci’s dark Colombian coffee alongside his own strong English Breakfast tea it was difficult to remember that.

Which was also why Kaku was accustomed enough to the early morning floor board creak that he rolled out of his, wonderfully comfortable, bed to pad into the kitchen. The back of Lucci’s grey shirt was dark with sweat and his shorts hung low on his hips as he bathed in the early morning light in front of the sink.

Kaku wrapped his arms around his waist, resting his chin on his shoulder. Lucci didn’t respond to the contact except for the slightest softening in his posture, but Kaku had adjusted to that.

Lucci was quiet, and rarely demonstrative, but he wasn’t shy in telling anyone to clear off. Kaku had learnt quickly that when Lucci sat down with his laptop on the couch and a frown line appeared between his eyebrows, it was not a good time to rest his feet in his lap. He had also learnt that after the frown line disappeared, Kaku could come across and work nimble fingers into tense shoulders and earn a deep noise that resembled the purr of a large cat.

Lucci finished the bottle and placed it down on the counter top to be cleaned and refilled, basking for a moment in the hazy warmth of the morning sun before he turned in Kaku’s embrace and kissed him.

“Shower?” His tone was soft as he stepped away, skipping over the usual morning pleasantries.

Pleasantries were for people who didn’t need to leave the house in ninety-seven minutes to terrify an architect into changing his cost-cutting measures back to the brief he was given.

Kaku smirked and leant into nip playfully at Lucci’s neck, then ducked away from him nimbly. A flicker of focus flashed through Lucci’s eyes as he reached out to snag the back of Kaku’s pyjamas, the well-worn material slipping through his fingers as the other man disappeared around the kitchen bench towards the bathroom.

The chase didn’t last long, there wasn’t enough space in the apartment for it to be more than a playful game of tag, but it didn’t stop Lucci aggressively pressing Kaku against the sink. The cold ceramic dug into the small of his back as Lucci leant over him possessively, his teeth sinking into the soft curve of his neck, just below the line of his collar.

Kaku gasped softly, arching his neck accommodatingly as his hands slipped under the soft cotton of Lucci’s shirt. His neck ached as Lucci pressed closer, his warm hands settling on the curve of his hips, fingertips trailing promisingly under the band of elastic that kept them up.

Anticipation coiled in Kaku’s stomach but Lucci’s hands didn’t move, keeping him pinned in place against the sink as he sunk sharp teeth first into the junction of his neck, then more gently across his collarbone.

A flash of pain followed the sharp nip of teeth, but heat curled in Kaku’s stomach and he hissed softly. There was a pause as Lucci’s sharp green eyes flicked up to Kaku’s, checking in.

Kaku leant down, stealing a kiss. The kiss deepened as Lucci straightened and then pressed him back against the sink.

They broke away Kaku pulled Lucci’s shirt over his head, black ringlets tumbling loosely around his shoulders. It landed on the floor somewhere near the door and then they were kissing again.

If time were on their side then Kaku knew that he could arch into the kiss, using the strength in his long legs to turn and press Lucci against the wall. He could slowly lick the salty tang off his neck and down his chest. He could have teased his shorts down his hips and nipped red marks into the muscles of his abdomen, until Lucci’s patience wore thin and he fisted a hand in his hair and took control.

But time wasn’t on their side, so instead Lucci pawed for the knob of the shower while he tugged Kaku’s pyjamas off and then encouraged him to step out of them. Lucci’s shorts and boxer briefs were left just off the bath mat, before Kaku found himself under the slightly-too-cold stream from the shower.

Experience had taught them that if they could tolerate the temperature just below comfortable then they could squeeze in an extra three and a half minutes before the water turned on them. Winter might see the end of their companionable shared showers but for now it was a careful balance of getting off and getting out before the water turned icy.

Lucci’s hands were on him again, blunt nails digging small indentations into his hips as he crowded him against the shower wall. Kaku’s hands were in Lucci’s hair as he dragged him down for another kiss that was more teeth and tongue than lips.

Kaku rolled his hips into Lucci’s, his legs bracketed between Lucci’s powerful thighs, which elicited a soft groan from his partner as he pressed their developing erections together.

“Patience,” Lucci grumbled into his mouth, nipping his lower lip.

Kaku snapped his teeth after him in a small display of disobedience, but didn’t hurry Lucci as he trailed his fingers up his chest to pinch his nipple between forefinger and thumb instead of them drifting lower.

“As much as I enjoy you taking your time with me-” a particular twist of skilled fingers caused him to gasp softly and arch his back away from the wall, “if I’m late to work again, my boss will seriously consider firing me.”

Lucci pulled his head away from marking his neck to consider this information, his focus a thing of wonder as his fingers drew another breathless pant from Kaku, who had started slowly rolling his hips into Lucci’s thigh.

“That could work for me, do you think she really will?” He smirked.

Kaku tugged at his hair playfully.

“If I get fired then I can’t pay rent and then you’ll have to go back to living in your hotel, which I believe currently doesn’t have running water, and eating takeaway meals.”

Lucci looked suitably affronted at the thought, which Kaku knew he would be, takeaway wasn’t a deal breaker but his hair needed daily care that couldn’t be provided with dry shampoo and gym showers.

He relented by reaching down to wrap a hand around both of their erections and Kaku groaned into his shoulder, his hips rolling lazily into his fist.

“I could pay your rent,” Lucci murmured into his ear, “then you wouldn’t have to go into work at all and I could just keep you, naked, on your bed, all day.”

Kaku groaned, tightening his hold on Lucci’s hair reflexively.

“And that would be fun, until you need to go back to England and I need to find a new job with a poor reference.”

“Oh, I would give you a glowing reference,” Lucci teased, his hand speeding up slightly around them as he started to snap his hips in time with Kaku’s persistent rolls.

Kaku laughed, the sound loud and bright as it echoed around the bathroom, and pulled Lucci in for another wet kiss. His orgasm crested quickly, not a drawn out drag of pleasure that left him shaking slightly for ten minutes afterwards, but a quick rush of pleasure from someone he didn’t really want to keep his hands off.

Lucci’s orgasm followed shortly afterwards, helped along by Kaku's dexterous fingers, and was washed away just as quickly by the shower. Kaku kissed him again, taking a moment to let his heartrate slow.

Then the rush of the morning flooded back in and the shower was suddenly a race to get through hair products and body washes. Lucci has expressed on more than one occasion how ridiculous it was to have to share a showerhead.

Lucci had honestly expressed on more than one occasion a distaste for having to share most things.

If it wasn’t a fight over the shower spray, then it was a fight over the mirror, or a fight over the sink. Prior to Lucci living with him, Kaku could say with absolute confidence that his morning shower routine had never taken more than ten minutes from stepping into the stall to finishing brushing his teeth.

Lucci, on the other hand, needed to spend three minutes letting the conditioner soak into his hair before rinsing it out, then he was fastidious about making sure he spent the recommended two minutes brushing his teeth while letting a leave-in hair mask set in his curls. Then he had a five-step cleansing process for his face, and that was before he started detailing his facial hair (which was every bit as time consuming as Kaku had assumed).

It wasn’t that Kaku didn’t do a version of each of these processes, it was just that cleaning his face was just a cleanser from the supermarket and the same moisturiser that he used on the rest of his body (he was cursed with dry skin). Shaving was a quick process to remove the patchy stubble that never really grew into anything noticeable, his hair only needed to be combed and if he occasionally ran out of time to brush his teeth, well he was only human.

He wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Lucci was a god by comparison.

The other thing that Kaku had learnt was that the morning shower process wasn’t, only, for the sake of vanity. It was Lucci carefully constructing the version of himself that he presented to the world.

It started with the sandal wood body wash in the shower, which was layered with the slightly floral scent of the hair mask he used to keep his curls tight. Over this he added the aromatic cologne that Kaku had been distracted by the first night he had met him at Blueno’s. The dark blue designer bottle now nestled in amongst their shared toiletries in the bathroom, carefully hidden away from the meagre natural light that the room offered. The next layers were visual, his perfectly manicured appearance paired with the tailored suit du jour, but completed the battle armour that hid Lucci from those seeking Rob Lucci, hotel mogul.

The colours of the suit were dictated by what kind of day Lucci anticipated having. He chose a navy suit with a red tie, which in Kaku’s experience meant he likely had a meeting with a supplier who was trying to charge him too much.

That said, the last time this particular suit had come out of Kaku’s wardrobe, Lucci hadn’t come home until the early hours of the morning, smelling of expensive wine and cigarettes.

He didn’t like this suit.

His feelings about the suit were largely irrelevant though as he rushed to straighten his own tie and find his right black oxford. Somehow despite needing more time in the bathroom, it was Lucci that was now calmly relaxed in the armchair that looked over the fire escape, a hot cup of coffee in his hand as he flicked through news on his phone.

Kaku managed to pour a smoothie into a takeaway cup while stuffing his laptop into his messenger bag. Lucci glanced up from his phone just as he clicked the front of the bag closed.

“I will be back late tonight, you don’t need to stay up,” his tone was informal but made Kaku stop.

“Oh,” he paused, “but it’s Friday,” he answered eventually, as if this would have bearing on Lucci’s plans.

Fridays had become unofficial date nights, and they had taken turns in finding new restaurants or experiences within the city. Lucci had gotten reservations at a three Michelin star restaurant that took bookings months in advance three weeks ago, and Kaku had been hoping to compete with that with tickets he had secured to Cirque du Soleil next Friday.

It was true that they hadn’t discussed plans to meet up that night, but it still felt strange.

“It was a last-minute meeting, but we can have dinner tomorrow night instead,” Lucci explained calmly, taking a sip of his coffee.

Kaku sensed that that was the end of the discussion and nodded, taking a few steps closer to lean down and brush a soft kiss over Lucci’s lips.

“Okay, well have fun then, I won’t stay up.”

Lucci’s gaze was soft as he returned the gentle kiss.

“Behave.”

Kaku chuckled and waved him off with a playful smirk. 

“I’ll think about it,” he replied as he shouldered his bag and picked up his house keys, breezing out of the apartment moments later to walk (jog) to work.

Kaku realised around midday that this was the first Friday that he had had free in nine weeks and, as a result, he had been slightly neglecting his other Friday evening friendships. 

He had seen Blueno plenty of times over the past two months, Lucci was prone to messaging in the afternoon on Tuesdays to meet him at the bar. He had also seen Luffy and Sabo once, at an art gallery opening for a particularly political friend of Sabo’s who specialised in mixed medium and glass projects. There had been an open bar, which was his excuse. He wasn’t sure why Blueno had been there though, looking at a grotesquely figured sculpture, just as Kaku was leaving.

He had seen Zoro once as well, on a Sunday afternoon at a local competition, but they hadn’t had much of a chance to catch up before Zoro was swept away by his friends for a post-match drink. He hadn’t seen Nami since he met Lucci though, and he felt inexplicably guilty about this, despite her blasé response to his apologies when she asked if he was free.

She couldn’t have been too cross though, because she answered in two rings when he called on his lunch break from an Italian restaurant just outside the doors of his building.

“I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number, the only Kaku I know is a dirty traitor whose boyfriend keeps him chained to the radiator.”

Okay, so maybe not completely indifferent to the radio silence.

“Only most nights,” he chuckled, “I’ve been given shore leave tonight though.”

Nami hummed noncommittally.

“It’s late notice, I don’t know if I have space for you in my schedule.”

“I’ll pay, wherever you want to go,” Kaku cajoled gently, knowing full well that the offer to pay would be abused and then some.

“I already have plans tonight, someone very rich and handsome promised me a night-time helicopter ride to admire the city lights,” Nami replied, with a tone of near indifference.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone had offered her this, but she still sounded like she was waiting for a better deal.

“Even if I promised to give you all the details of exactly what my gorgeous and successful boyfriend does to me while I’m chained to the radiator?”

A passing pair of middle-aged women in pressed designer suits and matching Louboutin pumps looked at him in shock, and perhaps mild concern, but he shifted to stare down at his ravioli instead.

Nami was silent on the phone for a moment, though he could hear the clicking of her keyboard in the background.

“Fine, but we’re going to Le Bernardin and you’re paying,” she relented eventually.

Kaku pulled his phone away from his ear to throw the restaurant name into Google and frowned. He was hardly dressed to be going to a five-star restaurant, even if it was to appease Nami.

“Do you have reservations?” He asked, hoping that this wasn’t some sort of test.

“Of course. I made them months ago for a couple who wanted to honeymoon in the Big Apple,” her voice was heavy with judgment, wondering why anyone would voluntarily honeymoon in one of the world’s most chaotic cities, “but they recently discovered that the bride is allergic to shellfish and that they’d prefer to do a four-week volunteering experience in Chile,”

Kaku wasn’t sure that that sounded like a better honeymoon.

“Long story short, I had the reservation for two to try their chef’s tasting menu so that I could make a proper recommendation, and then I dumped Hayden a week ago when he started getting wishy-washy about _where the relationship was going_ , so I don’t have a date for the evening.”

“Will you enjoy French seafood and my company more than a helicopter over the city?” Kaku teased.

“Will you come?” Nami asked.

Her tone was light but insistent, and Kaku guessed it was the closest that he would get to an admission that she had missed his company a little.

“What time is the reservation?” He asked, mentally sorting through his wardrobe for a more suitable suit.

“Seven-thirty, but it might be nice to meet for a drink beforehand, say six at that cute wine bar that Marco likes?” 

“Six sounds perfect, at the cute wine bar that Ace hates,” Kaku laughed, “I’ll look forward to it.”

“I’ll see you then,” Nami replied warmly, before disconnecting the call.

Which left Kaku with approximately five hours to finish the work he needed to for the weekend and source a suitable tie that Nami hadn’t criticised before that would work with the only custom made black three piece suit he owned.

In the end Kaku settled on a dark green silk tie with subtle silver patterning, and managed to arrive at the wine bar ten minutes early. When Nami arrived, she gave him an appreciative once over before wrapping her arms tightly around his neck.

“It’s good to see you, at last,” she greeted him with a huff of laughter.

“I am sorry, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind. Should we go in?” He asked after kissing her cheek.

Nami nodded, letting him hold the door open for her and then take her summer jacket to give to the coat check. The bar was well lit, with tall tables and stools but a very minimalist, modern design.

Nami chose a table near the window with a good view of the street and ordered a glass of pinot grigio, while Kaku ordered a glass of merlot and made himself comfortable at the table.

“So, what’s his name?” Nami asked as soon as her glass of wine touched the wood of the table.

“Rob Lucci,” Kaku smiled, “he’s English.”

“What does he do?”

“He owns a few hotels, he’s building one at the moment in the city,” Kaku replied, taking a sip of his wine.

Nami hummed, taking a sip of her wine as well.

“Does his family come from money then?” She asked curiously.

“Why the twenty questions?” he chuckled, “I don’t know honestly, I don’t think so.”

She smiled, her teeth flashing in the light, “just catching up on the details I missed.”

Kaku returned the smile more gently before beginning to talk softly, about a man driven by success who grew up in London with a masters degree in business management, about lazy Sunday afternoons spent in white sheets talking about their dreams, and phenomenal sex that left him reluctant to limp out of bed in the morning.

A little after seven, Kaku paid the bill and retrieved Nami’s coat so that they could make their way over to the restaurant.

“So, how have things been for you?” He asked as they made their way across the street and down a few blocks to the restaurant.

“Work has been going well, summer is always busy for weddings though. I have two this weekend and three the weekend after, it’s crazy,” she sighed, “and everyone seems to want photographs in the park.”

Kaku chuckled, “what’s wrong with photographs in the park?”

“Nothing in particular, it’s just so generic. Everyone has been asking if the photographers will take photos of them in a water reflection because they’ve seen it on Instagram and it’s so original,” she waved a hand dismissively.

Kaku made a noise of agreement as he opened the door to the building where the restaurant was, waiting for Nami to walk past him.

“I don’t think I’d like to get married in the summer,” he mused as they waited for the lift, considering how uncomfortable it would be to spend the day in a three-piece suit dancing and mingling in the heat.

Nami glanced over at him consideringly.

“No, you do complain any time the temperature creeps north of ninety degrees,” she agreed, “I think I’d like a small destination wedding, just close friends and family, somewhere with white sandy beaches as far as the eye can see that I can book out, so I don’t have to worry about tourists.”

The idea of tourists was said with such disdain that Kaku had to laugh.

“I’m surprised you don’t have a hotel bookmarked already, you must have booked somewhere you liked at some point?”

“I have a shortlist, but it really depends on how much my fiancé will be adding to the wedding funds,” she shrugged.

Kaku smiled, looking around the restaurant curiously as Nami turned to give the maître d’, a petite woman with light brown hair tucked into a tight bun, the details of her booking. The main room was buzzing with quiet conversations under the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling. The room felt warm, with wooden accents and leather chairs, and a painting of the ocean that stretched the entire backwall.

The maître d’ waved a waiter over, a young man in his mid-twenties who gave Nami a wide smile as he greeted her. Kaku missed his name but Nami must have caught it because she laughed breezily, a sound reserved for when she was angling for something, and followed him to a table in the middle of the room against a glass dividing panel.

After Nami had ordered wine, the sommelier’s recommendation for the chef’s tasting menu, and water for the table, the waiter left and Nami’s sharp brown eyes returned their focus to Kaku.

“So, does this mean you’re thinking about your wedding? I should warn you that I don’t have space in my schedule for at least eight months but we could start planning a winter wedding for a year and a half if you wanted,” Nami smirked, leaning her chin in the palm of her hand casually.

He chuckled softly and ran a hand through his hair.

“No, nothing like that,” he paused, “I’m not really sure where it’s going to be honest. He’s going back to England as soon as the build is finished, which should be in November if everything continues to schedule.”

“That’s still four months away,” Nami reasoned.

“I know, I just don’t want to start thinking about one year plans with a guy who isn’t even going to be in the country,” he shrugged, running a finger around the rim of his glass.

“Do you like him?”

Kaku rolled his eyes with a smile, “what does that have to do with it?”

Nami shrugged, taking a slow sip of her wine.

“You’re too cautious, you’re worried that if you add the sugar in step two instead of step five, you’ll end up with cookie dough instead of a pavlova-”

“I’m actually pretty sure the sugar is step two in a pavlova,” Kaku interrupted with a huff.

“My point is,” Nami resumed, not put off by his interruption at all, “falling in love isn’t about following a recipe, if you like him then don’t worry about where he’s going to be in four months. If he’s worth it, I will visit you in London.”

She didn’t sound very put upon by the idea, but was trying to.

“I don’t think he’d ask me to come back to the UK with him, for all I know he already has a live-in boyfriend in his penthouse suite in Mayfair,” Kaku replied lightly, ignoring the pang that followed the thought.

Nami frowned at him.

“Please, you can take some poncy British boy,” she waved a hand dismissively, “just pull out one of your little swords and wave it around until they run away crying.”

“Is this what you do to your boyfriends’ other partners?” He laughed.

“No, but I am happy to tell Luffy and Zoro where they live if they cheat,” she shrugged, leaning back in her seat as the waiter arrived with their entrees.

Of the pair, Kaku was absolutely convinced that Zoro would be the more reasonable in that situation, but he didn’t envy anyone who found themselves answering the door to that.

“We haven’t discussed whether we’re exclusive so I can hardly justify sicking Luffy on him, even if he does have a boyfriend in every country he visits.”

Nami rolled her eyes.

“The man is living with you, rent free, if he’s getting into anyone’s pants but yours I will sick Luffy on him myself,” she replied, taking a small forkful of her entrée and moaning appreciatively.

“He’s not sleeping with anyone else, he wouldn’t even have the time,” he sighed eventually.

“Then why aren’t you thinking about moving overseas with him?” Name asked, gesturing her fork at him.

“Because I’m not uprooting my life for a guy I’ve known less than half a year,” Kaku replied calmly, taking another forkful of tuna.

“You should take the risk anyway,” she pressed.

“Nami,” he replied, making firm eye contact until Nami looked away.

“Fine,” she huffed, finishing her plate, “what are we doing for your birthday?”

He smiled, glad for the change of topic.

“I actually enjoyed Luffy’s party-”

“We’re not going to paintball again,” Nami interrupted as the waiter cleared their plates, “it took weeks to get the paint out my hair and you ended up looking like you were in a mugging.”

“I was actually thinking about going rollerblading. We could find an arcade, hire a few pairs of blades and make an afternoon of it,” he chuckled.

“Oh, well, that’s a better idea,” she agreed, “how is it related to Luffy’s birthday though?”

“I just hadn’t done anything like that since I was seven and had a laser tag party, and it was more fun than a restaurant dinner with twenty people who barely knew each other,” Kaku shrugged.

“It could be fun, have you found somewhere yet? If you want to book out the rink, you’ll probably need to do it soon,” Nami replied absently as she pulled out her phone.

“I hadn’t thought about it too much, you don’t think it’s childish?” He asked, a little nervously.

She shook her head, a curl of copper hair falling loose from the ponytail she was wearing.

“No, you’re twenty-five, not an invalid. I do think we will need to make sure we have the rink to ourselves though, I can only imagine the damage Luffy would do to some unsuspecting five-year-old who is only just managing to put one skate in front of the other.”

Kaku laughed. He could picture perfectly someone’s child going flying while Luffy demonstrated some move that he’d name Gum Gum Slingshot or something, and then spending the afternoon apologising while Luffy gave everyone puppy-dog eyes.

“It would be a disaster. Can we book the whole rink though? Wouldn’t that be bad for business?”

“Some rinks will have a separate area, or a separate rink, specifically for party bookings,” Nami replied offhandedly as she continued to scroll through her phone, despite the waiter returning with their second courses.

Kaku smiled at the waiter as he placed his lobster in front of him, and then topped off both his and Nami’s glasses.

“Well, I guess I’ll try to work it out when I get home, if you think it’ll be fun.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she shook her head, “it can be my gift to you, and I can probably negotiate a discount on the group booking. Just leave it with me.”

“Are you sure? You were saying earlier how busy you were,” Kaku frowned.

“It will be twenty minutes of research and one phone call, just get me a rough guest list so I have a head count and we’ll call it even,” Nami smiled, taking a small bite of her lobster, “also, this food is to die for. I can’t believe that silly couple didn’t want to come here.”

Kaku chuckled softly, carefully taking a forkful of the white meat from the shell. Personally, he had never been very adventurous with his food. Nami, and Lucci he had found, took any opportunity to try new dishes and cuisines, from expensive to extravagant to downright weird and everything in between. Zoro had voiced once that he would be happier with a burger or plain rice any day, which was a sentiment Kaku could understand.

The lobster was enjoyable though, even if the sea urchin sauce sounded a bit strange.

“Were they serious about honeymooning in Chile? Volunteering?” He asked, taking a sip of his wine with his next fork of lobster.

“Unfortunately, yes, the difficulty is that they want to stay in five-star hotels while volunteering. I’ve tried to explain that you can travel sustainably, or you can travel luxuriously, but there isn’t a nice middle ground for their requirements but it’s fallen on deaf ears.” 

Nami sighed, “so instead they have volunteered for three weeks rescuing turtles, while staying at a gorgeous ocean front resort that is responsible of a large portion of the plastic waste that will end up killing so many of the turtles they’re rescuing.”

Kaku couldn’t quite wrap his head around that logic, so he didn’t try for long.

“Are they paying you well for it?” He asked, deciding to stay in safer territory.

“Fortunately, yes. Between the two of them, they’ve got far too much money and no sense,” she shook her head.

“When is their wedding?”

“A month from now, but I’m sure I’ll have more issues between now and then. I’ve already had to deal with the bridal seamstress crying on the phone four times after alteration appointments, and the groom’s guest list keeps changing because his mother can’t decide who is in the family’s good graces and who isn’t. 

“Last week he called to inform me that his brother, who is one of his groomsmen, was unlikely to still be coming. Then he called the next day at eleven o’clock at night to tell me that he was reinvited because he apologised to his mother for calling her dog a toy monster,” Nami took a deep breath, “when I plan your wedding, there will be no changes without at least four weeks’ notice.”

Kaku laughed, “my wedding to Lucci?”

“Or whomever, I’ll let you know what I think of him at your party,” she smiled innocently.

“I don’t know that he’ll definitely come, he’s busy with work a lot and meeting everyone like that might be a bit much…” He replied, playing with the stem of his wine glass.

“If I can carve out time for you on a Saturday during wedding season, I’m sure he can too. Besides, he seems to have monopolised your weekends up until now so he must have some free time,” Nami smirked.

Kaku flushed slightly, “I’ll ask him, but it is a lot. It would be most of my friends in one room with rollerblades, and probably sugar.”

“And if he survives then we’ll know he’s a keeper,” Nami laughed, “besides, if he seems nervous, just tell him that he can bring a friend or two as a safety blanket.”

Kaku stalled, trying to imagine what Lucci would be like if he was nervous, as the waiter returned to clear their plates and replace them with the third course.

“I’ll let him know, if that is an issue, but I don’t know if he knows many people in the city aside from his architect and Blueno.”

“Well, Blueno can come, Luffy likes him and Sabo probably wouldn’t hate seeing him again,” Nami mused, sniffing the Cuvée that has been poured to accompany the fish curiously.

“It seemed more like Blueno was going to murder Sabo and bury his body under the bar the last time they met,” Kaku winced.

Nami chuckled, “Sabo likes people with strong opinions who make well founded arguments. No one’s opinion can be wrong as long as it’s well researched, well-argued and doesn’t hurt anyone. Or at least that’s what he’s told me.”

“Remind me again how he considers himself related to Luffy and Ace? Luffy’s idea of a well-argued opinion is you’re wrong,” Kaku laughed softly, using his hands to make air marks.

Nami shrugged, cutting up a small piece of fish and dipping it into the emulsion.

“My sister owns a tangerine grove and sells homemade juice, she constantly struggles to break even and lives with four cats, but she couldn’t be happier, so I couldn’t be happier for her. You don’t get to pick your family of circumstance any more than you do your family of blood.”

Kaku took a long sip of his wine, feeling chastened.

“I guess it’s just only child syndrome,” he smiled at her over his glass.

Nami returned the smile and shrugged a shoulder, “the way Luffy tells it, as children, he and Sabo got along better than he and Ace did, so personality isn’t the only element to it.”

“I’m not completely surprised, I can see Sabo being the mediator between tiny Luffy and tiny Ace,” Kaku laughed.

Nami laughed as well as she launched into the story of the first time she had met Ace, a few months after she and Luffy had become friends in middle school. Kaku was still listening, Luffy stories were always oddly enthralling, he his eyes drifted to watch the other occupants of the restaurant.

He wasn’t exactly sure when he had noticed that there was a door along the back wall, but he was curious instead of surprised when it opened. Absently he thought it must be the entrance to the private dining area, tucked away from the main dining room.

It was a waiter that walked through first, dressed in the same pressed uniform as the waiter who had been at their own table, but instead of returning to the floor or heading towards the kitchen, he stopped to hold the door. Kaku glanced away as a woman a few tables away from them laughed particularly loudly, and then turned his gaze back to Nami to hum in agreement as she expressed exasperation at an action of Luffy’s.

Kaku glanced back towards the door when a flicker of gold caught the corner of his eye. The waiter was now holding the door for two people, though Kaku could only clearly see the man furthest through the door.

He was tall, though not as tall as Kaku, with neatly combed blond hair that glowed gold in the lighting from the restaurant. He was elegantly dressed in a double-breasted black suit that was cut perfectly to highlight the taper of his waist, accentuating the length of his legs which gave him the illusion of height.

Kaku couldn’t tell from where he was seated what the exact colour of his shirt was, but it was light (possibly teal) and flattered the creaminess of the man’s skin. What had caught Kaku’s eye, though, was that he was tossing and catching a gold lighter while he waited for his companion. The light glanced occasionally off the metal object before the man returned it to his breast pocket and took another few steps away from the doorway.

Kaku turned back to Nami, opening his mouth to ask a question about her story before he froze.

Stepping out of the doorway from the private dining area was a man, taller than his blond companion and dressed in a navy suit with curly black hair tied back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck.


	3. Buggy Bowls and Skates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments on my previous chapter. It's so nice to hear what people think as they read this. 
> 
> I think this might actually end up being five chapters, but I don't want to guarantee anything right now. See how the next chapter fleshes out.
> 
> I'm sorry that there's not more angst, the reason is two fold: 1. Lucci just doesn't have the patience for the forms of misunderstandings that lead to true angst, and 2. the point of the story is sort of more of a short overview of their relationship, not a deep dive into their dramas. 
> 
> So instead, I'm afraid you'll have to suffer through mild angst and lots of fluff. I am a sucker for angst though, so maybe in the next fic.
> 
> Happy belated birthday to Sanji, who is my all time favourite character in One Piece. 
> 
> Please enjoy Kaku hating on him jealously for a few thousand words.

It was an hour before the ceremony was due to start when Nami’s phone rang, a shrill tone that made Kaku glance up from the card game he and Franky were engaged with. Franky was slightly more dressed down than the rest of his groomsmen, the activity of the morning had meant that he had left his jacket safely in the dressing room and he hadn’t put on his tie yet.

Kaku suspected that Zoro was a little jealous of this fact, as he kept fiddling with the collar of his shirt and glaring at his tie (purple, the same as the other groomsmen, and strangely more complimentary on him than anyone else). When the colour scheme for the wedding had been chosen, Nami had suggested that the groomsmen wear the other party’s chosen colour. So, Zoro, Kid and Franky were in purple silk ties, and Nami was in a purple gown, and Sanji, Blueno, Law and Kalifa were in orange.

Nami moved away from the card game to take the call but didn’t leave the room. She hummed twice and then sighed in annoyance.

“I really don’t care who they are, if they aren’t on the guest list then they’re not coming in,” she rolled her eyes.

There was a pause while the person on the other end of the phone spoke, the anxious tone travelling across the rooms even if the exact words didn’t.

“If they’re so desperate to talk to the groom then they can call him.”

Another pause.

“Oh, come on, that’s just a thinly veiled way of saying that they don’t have his number and never have,” Nami replied with a tone of irritation.

There was another break in the conversation Kaku could hear, and then Name took a deep breath and sighed.

“Fine, I’ll be down in a minute,” she snapped, hanging up the call and tossing her phone into the pocket that was sneakily hidden in her stole.

When she turned back, she looked annoyed.

“Sorry lovely, this shouldn’t take long,” she smiled apologetically in Kaku’s direction, then kissed Kid’s cheek.

Zoro looked up with a frown as he finished his glass of sake.

“What’s going on?” He asked gruffly as he sat up.

“Nothing important, there’s just someone downstairs saying that he’s a guest of Lucci’s but he isn’t on the guest list and I’ve never heard of him before,” she shook her head.

“Let us know if you need a hand,” Zoro replied, flopping back onto the cushions of the sofa and closing his eyes.

The offer was mostly redundant, everyone in the room had first-hand experience of Nami’s ability to look after herself, especially if it was for her work.

“Thanks for taking care of it,” Kaku offered instead, with a small smile.

Nami nodded and strode out of the room, checking the small watch on the inside of her right wrist as she did so. Kaku looked over at the antique clock on the wall. An hour was plenty of time to have security remove whoever was downstairs, he just hoped that this wasn’t foreshadowing an interruption during the ceremony.

After the engagement had been announced, Kaku had experienced the strangest outpouring of resentment and pushback, from people he had never met. It wasn’t as if Lucci was famous, he wasn’t even that well known outside of select circles. He owned seven hotels now in different countries, and they were all very successful, so he lived comfortably, but he wasn’t routinely hassled outside his work and would never be recognised on the street.

But as soon as the engagement was public knowledge (it had started in an internal company email), it seemed like every person Lucci had ever dated, and many that he hadn’t, had come crawling out of the woodwork. 

The strangest encounter Kaku had had was with a man, around his age, who had cornered him in the Waitrose that had been just up the road from Lucci’s London flat. The man wasn’t particularly intimidating, but it was … unusual to have someone claiming to be your fiancé’s soulmate while gesticulating at you with a cucumber. What made matters worse was that the man’s primary complaint about Kaku had been that he was an American, and therefore too stupid to meet Lucci’s intellectual needs. 

It turned out that this one had been called Joel, and he and Lucci had had a brief relationship a short time after Lucci graduated university. There had been more than one that Lucci had never spoken to, though these claims of undying devotion or star-crossed lover-dom were typically made through letters or videos delivered to the flat.

That said, the wedding venue had been chosen to be so far away from everything, and only the guests who were invited had been informed of the location, specifically to ensure that there were no uninvited guests. While Kaku was reasonably certain that Lucci’s secret lover wasn’t going to make a guest appearance and interrupt the wedding, he would feel much more comfortable if Nami came back and told them all that it had been someone’s from Lucci’s work who had misplaced his personal number and was having an emergency.

Franky interrupted Kaku’s staring at the dressing room door by clearing his throat obnoxiously, a tone that could almost guarantee that he was moments away from bursting into song. 

In spite of the fact that he was tone deaf.

Zoro responded quickest, lightening reflexes hefting a couch cushion over his head at the taller man.

“If you start singing, I will dissect you with the butter knife,” Zoro warned.

“Bro~ that’s not a super attitude at all, you guys already took my ukulele two nights ago,” Franky whined.

“We wouldn’t have taken it if you didn’t insist on singing about the sanctity of the wedding night at four am,” Kid laughed, “between you, Brook and Luffy I don’t think Lucci even wants a wedding night anymore.”

Kaku glanced around at his groomsmen and chuckled softly.

“Well, I hope that’s not true, otherwise why have I been listening to all your bad jokes about it?” He teased, laying down a set of threes before adding his score to the piece of paper between himself and Franky.

Kid and Franky still had a marginally higher score, and Kaku thought he might be faring better if Zoro had even looked at their cards but that was neither here nor there.

For now, all he could do was wait, and hope that Nami came back soon.

~ ~ ~

The apartment was dark when Kaku got back a little after nine-thirty, and his keys clattered loudly against the bowl on the entryway table when he dropped them. The air was thick and still as he waded to his bedroom.

His suit jacket ended up tossed over the hamper, his shoes and socks somewhere in the vicinity of his wardrobe, and the rest of his suit in a pile next to the bed. He was vaguely aware that he smelt of rich meats and alcohol, and that he should make an effort to wash the day off. He didn’t.

Instead, he wrapped the blankets from the queen-sized bed tightly around himself and buried his head under the pillow. It was petty but part of him took satisfaction in the image of Lucci curling up on his side of the bed, cold and uncomfortable.

If he came home.

Kaku sniffed into the quilt cover and pressed the pillow over his ears, blocking out the sounds the city and clenched his eyes shut. It was still early, so it was too much to hope that he could just fall asleep and leave the night behind, but dammit he was going to try.

He could picture with perfect clarity Lucci standing next to the blond man, smiling indulgently as he had spoken with the waiter, and then the touch to his shoulder, feather soft, to get his attention and lead him out of the restaurant. He hadn’t done anything, just sat frozen and watched, until Nami had interrupted his stare with a pointed cough.

He couldn’t remember much of the evening after that, the food was warm but tasteless and Nami’s conversation was a muted mumble behind the roar of white noise in his head. He had only just managed to pull himself together enough to feign excitement when he had given her the birthday present he had procured for her weeks earlier, a green silk scarf and light brown leather autumn gloves.

He hoped that she wasn’t too disappointed, but he couldn’t recall her tone as he had put her in a taxi at the end of the night. He couldn’t recall the walk home either, aside from a faint recollection of yelling at an intersection and a fight that he had crossed the road to avoid.

He had spent the earlier part of the evening trying to convince Nami that it didn’t matter if Lucci was seeing anyone else, they hadn’t defined the relationship, they were happy with what it was.

Temporary.

Convenient.

Replaceable.

It shouldn’t matter that Lucci was slightly touch averse, until he was laying claim to something. He shouldn’t be hung up wondering who the blond was and why Lucci was touching him, his shoulder or anywhere else.

It wasn’t important that the blond was elegant in ways that Kaku could spend his whole life trying to imitate and only ever be a pale reflection of. Whether Lucci chose to spend his time with someone who complemented him, two commanding figures who were perfectly groomed, educated and refined, was none of Kaku’s business.

The blond man could very well be Lucci’s partner, visiting from the penthouse suite in Mayfair to engage Lucci in thoughtful conversation about his business over exquisite food. He could then whisk Lucci away to an expensive hotel and thrill him between the sheets with just how flexible those long legs were.

Kaku was flexible, the difference would be that where the blond could probably perform gracefully, Kaku’s flexibility tended to end with someone, usually himself, getting kneed in the face.

Gangly and awkward, or elegant and suave with perfectly tailored suits.

“Fuck,” Kaku swore into the darkness, rolling onto his back in his cocoon and then pressing the pillow into his face.

It shouldn’t matter, but it did.

Sleep crept in slowly that night, long after a hush had fallen on the streets outside the window, but the deadbolt on the front door did not open.

* * *

Kaku woke at seven-thirty when the floorboard in the kitchen groaned, awareness rushing in on him aggressively as his eyes shot open. His cocoon of pettiness held tight though, causing him to awkwardly kick and flail as he tried to sit up. There was a heavy thump as he hit the floor, his cheek smacking the corner of his bedside table as he went down.

He laid on the floor under the window for a long moment, contemplating the ache in his cheek and the woollen feeling in his mouth, before extracting one arm from the cocoon and rolling himself free of the blankets. He tenderly pressed the pads of his fingers against his cheek, relieved to find they came away dry.

The springs of the bed squeaked as Lucci’s face appeared over the edge, his hair loose around his shoulders and slightly damp.

“Had a big night, did you?” he enquired, his tone playful rather than concerned.

Kaku’s brain stalled.

He knew he had several options; he knew that emotionally he still felt unsettled, threatened by the blond model, upset that Lucci might leave him for the blond model, or anyone else who might scrape slightly closer to Lucci’s social sphere.

But.

He had come home.

To Kaku.

Even if he had spent most of the night with the leggy blond, who surely had another bed to offer. He was home. In his small apartment on Cornelia Street with the creaky floorboards.

Kaku surged up to hug his arms around Lucci’s neck, almost spilling the cup of coffee the other man was holding on the white bed sheets and the woollen throw that Lucci had clearly borrowed from the couch for the night.

“You came home,” he mumbled happily into his shoulder.

Lucci sat back slightly on his heels to carefully place his mug on the bedside table, and then wrapped strong arms around Kaku’s waist to haul him into his lap. Kaku was slightly to long to fit neatly, but he curled his legs behind Lucci’s back and settled against his chest, his ear pressed into his collarbone just above his heart.

“How much did you drink last night? You left a trail of clothing from the front door and everything smelled of wine,” Lucci grumbled, stroking large hands down Kaku’s spine.

“I went out with Nami,” Kaku shrugged.

Lucci didn’t need to know that he hadn’t been drunk and that his behaviour this morning was motivated by anxiety rather than a hangover.

Lucci hummed disapprovingly and pulled away slightly, warm fingers slipping under Kaku’s chin to lift his face slightly. His gaze was cool as he examined his cheek, tilting his head slightly to catch the morning light, and then brushing the pad of his thumb over the rapidly reddening bruise.

“We better put some ice on that, otherwise you are going to look a sight on Monday,”

Kaku nodded in agreement, and then sat back slightly to untangle his legs from Lucci and stand. Lucci’s eyes flashed with interest as he noted that Kaku had forgone pyjamas the night before, miles of leanly muscled, pale skin that eventually disappeared into snug black boxer briefs suddenly on perfect display, but Kaku wasn’t paying attention. 

Too tired and sore for a shower, he pulled on a pair of loose tracksuit pants and a black jumper that was probably too hot for the middle of summer, but that let him hide in the high neck. He glanced over his shoulder as he tucked his hands into the pockets of the hoodie, admiring the play of the morning light over Lucci’s naked chest as he watched him, sipping his coffee slowly.

Kaku didn’t know how to broach last night with Lucci, and he was reluctant to disrupt the peaceful sprawl the other man had adopted against the headboard of the bed. Instead, he chose to give himself some space and shuffled into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea and two slices of toast.

When he returned, a bag of ice wrapped in a tea towel tucked into the pocket of his jumper, Lucci had turned on the television that was mounted in the corner of the small room and had resumed their current binge TV show. He had also restored the quilt to the bed and had tucked his bare feet under the woollen throw.

“Did you have any plans for today?” Kaku asked quietly, sinking onto the bed next to him.

“Nothing important,” Lucci replied, just as softly, “how is your cheek?”

Kaku shrugged as he took a bite out of his toast, he would ice it properly when he could lie back but he wanted to eat first.

Lucci hummed in response and then wrapped an arm around Kaku’s waist to draw him in against his broad chest and tuck him under the throw. In the background, the TV continued to play and there was noise from the street below, but the silence on the bed stretched.

Lucci seemed content, his chin resting gently on top of Kaku’s head as he watched the TV or scrolled aimlessly through news posts on his phone. He smelled of fresh citrus from his shower, but buried underneath the soapy scent was the scent of cigarettes.

It was Kaku that eventually caved to the silence, having twitched and tossed through two full episodes and finally discarded the ice pack because it was completely melted.

“So,” he paused, gathering strength, “it’s my birthday in two weeks…”

He stopped again to gauge Lucci’s response.

Lucci shifted slightly to look down at him and raised an eyebrow for him to continue.

“Nami asked if I wanted to do anything for it, and I thought it might be fun to go roller-blading.”

Lucci smirked indulgently.

“How old are you? Seven?” He teased, tugging at Kaku’s hair playfully.

“Well, I will be twenty-five,” he replied smartly, then paused again, “I was wondering if you’d like to come?”

Lucci paused, even as his hand continued to stroke gently through Kaku’s hair.

“To a roller-blading party for your twenty-fifth birthday with your friends?” He asked eventually, rolling the sentence over his tongue as he considered the proposal carefully.

Kaku nodded, “you could bring a friend if you wanted, I know it sounds a bit like throwing you to the wolves…”

“Blueno is certainly of the impression that some of your friends are animals,” Lucci replied, his tone thick with an amused judgment that made Kaku blush.

He had forgotten that Lucci probably already had a second-hand impression of his friends, courtesy of Zoro’s birthday party at Blueno’s two years ago. It felt a little unfair.

“Well, we can’t have been that bad, Blueno didn’t ban us,” Kaku offered with a nervous smile.

“No, he did not,” Lucci agreed with a throaty laugh, “are you sure you want me to come? I’m not always the most people-friendly person.”

Kaku knew this, of course. He had seen Lucci verbally eviscerate multiple people over the phone, though he seemed to reign in his temper enough that it was usually only directed at people who were paid highly enough to tolerate it.

He shrugged a shoulder in response.

“I would like it, but you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. It just might be… nice,” he paused uncomfortably, not wanting to feel like he had to justify wanting Lucci to come, “besides, Nami probably wants to interrogate the person responsible for stealing her Friday night drinking company.”

Lucci laughed again, leaning down to kiss his cheek, “I am not sure if you are allowed to go out drinking with her again, you clearly make bad choices.”

“I didn’t drink that much,” Kaku grumbled, folding his arms over his chest.

“Of course not,” Lucci chuckled, “if you want me to come, then I will. I make no promises about my ability to skate though, and I might invite a friend or two, if they are still in town.”

“You have a friend in town?” Kaku asked curiously, clinging to personal information that was freely given.

“Aside from Blueno you mean?” He asked with a smirk.

Kaku rolled his eyes and rolled onto his side, away from Lucci’s chest, “obviously aside from Blueno, we see Blueno all the time, I am aware that Blueno is a friend of yours who lives in the city.”

Lucci chuckled, looping warm hands underneath Kaku’s jumper to drag him back against his chest again. He tugged the jumper over Kaku’s head as a tame punishment for the perceived disobedience and then manhandled him back into the curve of his side.

Kaku turned sharp chestnut eyes towards the other man and glowered up at him, but only received a slightly patronising smirk in response as Lucci’s arms tightened around his waist. It wasn’t until he settled again, without the indication of bratty rebelliousness that Lucci responded.

“A good friend of mine is in New York from London for the next week or so for filming, I do not know if he will still be here in two weeks though.”

Kaku would admit that he was curious, were all of Lucci’s friends like Blueno (and like Lucci himself)? Driven to the point of obsession and wildly successful, with slightly unusual passions and too much intellect to be safely conversed with. Or did he have some more normal friends? People who were moderately successful because they had completed some form of study and were employed, who went out drinking on a Friday night because their bosses were awful human beings and then spent Saturday nursing a hangover.

Kaku paused. That didn’t really seem fair, of the people who he considered friends, he was the only one who really went out drinking on a Friday night because he didn’t like his boss. Nami was her own boss and more than happy about it. If Zoro had a boss it would only be the crazy German swordsman he called master, but it seemed like a bit of a stretch and usually the man was the reason Zoro wasn’t allowed to drink anyway. 

Luffy, Usopp and Marco were all also self-employed, in a sense. Ace seemed to adore his boss; a fire-fighting legend called Whitebeard that Ace had referred to on occasion as ‘Pops’. He had never heard Chopper mention his boss one way or another, which probably meant that he had as much freedom in his role as he wanted. 

He supposed maybe Sabo could classify, he certainly spent Friday evenings nursing a strong drink while complaining about the politicians he worked under, but it was usually because he considered their views outdated and too conservative, not because they had asked him to get one thousand copies of a proposal before parliament sat.

So, then, was it just Kaku? Moderately successful with an awful human being as a manager and a mild drinking problem?

He shook his head to clear that line of thought, his life was complicated enough without adding more dissatisfaction to it.

“What is your friend filming?” Kaku asked.

He was struggling to see a scenario where Lucci would be friends with an actor, but he supposed it was possible.

Lucci leaned down to nuzzle into Kaku neck, his teeth grazing the skin underneath his ear.

“He is doing a guest week on a television show,” he replied, the grip he had around Kaku’s waist loosening slightly as his hands slipped down to his hips.

“Which one?” Kaku asked curiously, watching Lucci innocently, pretending for a moment that he had no idea what his too warm hands were questing for.

Lucci smirked, his lips parting slightly as he ran his tongue over his canines.

“Oh, I can’t tell you that, pet,” he chuckled darkly into Kaku’s neck, before he bit down on the junction of his throat.

Kaku gasped, his fingers clenching into Lucci’s arms as his neck arched away from Lucci’s mouth, not to pull away but to give him space as he worried a mark into the delicate skin at the base of his throat. The sensation zipped down Kaku’s spine, electrifying and sharp, as he pressed closer to the other man, curling one leg over his hips and twining their legs together.

“Why not?” Kaku groaned petulantly, straining to pay attention to the conversation despite Lucci’s advances.

“Confidentiality agreements,” Lucci hummed, rolling over to pin Kaku to the mattress.

Kaku shifted underneath Lucci’s broader frame and then leant up to kiss him. The kiss was slow and exploratory, an enjoyment of the press of another warm body on and around him. He threaded his fingers gently through Lucci’s soft curls, massaging the pads of his fingers into his scalp soothingly as he pulled him closer. Lucci made a deep noise in his throat that could have resembled a purr and pressed Kaku deeper into the pillows as he deepened the kiss.

He knew that the conversation was shelved for now, at least as far as Lucci was concerned. It bothered him that getting a straight answer from the other man was sometimes like trying to hold water in your hands, really it did. 

But, at the same time, whoever the blond man had been, Lucci was in his bed at ten o’clock the next morning, pawing at him like he was something precious and rare. And it was worth a little distraction to indulge in that attention.

The blond man better hope Kaku never caught wind of him again though.

* * *

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Over the next two weeks, Kaku found that almost every evening the smoke of rich cigarettes clung to Lucci’s jackets, even if they had only been dry cleaned days earlier. Lucci must have also been aware of it, because he had taken to fastidiously separating his clothes from Kaku’s in the laundry and the fortnightly trips to the dry cleaner had become weekly instead.

Kaku was reasonably convinced that if Lucci had picked up smoking, a habit Kaku didn’t really want to be exposed to but wouldn’t judge, then he would have said something. Or there would be evidence of it in the apartment.

There wasn’t. Kaku had checked. Thoroughly.

Which meant that Lucci was seeing the leggy blond almost daily.

The blond model with the bad habits who was clearly trying to encroach on Kaku’s, admittedly unmarked, territory.

Of course, the feelings of jealousy and anger did not bring him any closer to having a conversation with Lucci that would define their relationship. It was still mostly likely that it was only a temporary agreement, until Lucci returned to London, and Kaku wasn’t quite brave enough to hear that.

So instead, he had been downright moody, swinging from aloof and occasionally rude when Lucci came home smelling of smoke, to clingy and needy when he needed to reassert his place in Lucci’s life. There had been one occasion when Lucci had called him at lunch time, asking about their plans for dinner, when Kaku had overheard another man in the background of the call. The smooth baritone, with the softest hint of a foreign accent, had caused him to snap over the phone and spend the rest of the afternoon in a feral temper.

Frankly it was a miracle that Lucci had only commented on his mood twice, with a curious tone that had gently suggested that he calm down before he disrupted Lucci’s evening.

However, it was Saturday and Lucci had agreed to spend the day celebrating his birthday with his friends. He hadn’t even smelled of smoke when he picked him up from work on Friday, so the evening had been enjoyably free of blond distractions. 

In fact, the evening had been free of most distractions as Lucci had demonstrated a previously unexplored fascination with handcuffs and blindfolds. They had fallen asleep together in the early hours of the morning, Kaku feeling hoarse and boneless in a way that he had not experienced before.

When he had woken, he was still carefully wrapped in his heavy quilt and Lucci had appeared with a tray of pancakes and tea. After breakfast in bed and a round of sex where Kaku had ridden Lucci’s cock until they were both breathless and desperate for release, they had showered, bundled the bed sheets into the laundry, and changed.

Kaku had opted for a pair of comfortable jeans with a bright orange t-shirt with a faded sporting logo printed across the front and well-worn but clean Converses, pocketing a pair of thicker socks just in case. Lucci had chosen jeans as well but was wearing a light-weight pale green cotton button up over the top and a pair of Oxford boots. It was about as casual as Kaku had seen him; he honestly wasn’t sure if the other man owned any stretch fabrics.

The only sign that Lucci may have been slightly nervous was that he had tried his hair back into a low ponytail, which had indicated in the past that he was either focused or he wanted to make a good impression. Kaku hoped he wanted to make a good impression.

Hell, Kaku hoped he made a good impression, and that his friends made a good impression. It crossed his mind as they stood on the subway to Brooklyn, pressed together in the middle of a carriage, both hanging to the same strap, that maybe his birthday party wasn’t such a great time to introduce Lucci to his friends, or himself to any of Lucci’s friends that he hadn’t met.

Too late now.

Nami had organised that the rink would be booked from eleven for the rest of the afternoon, with the understanding that she had a wedding that she needed to leave for at four and that Blueno would want to slink back to his bar to micromanage his staff by five. In reality, they probably wouldn’t want to be there that long, only Luffy would have the energy for hours of skating but Nami hadn’t wanted them to feel rushed.

She was pleased that the rink she had found also ran a bowling alley and an arcade on their upper floors, so there were other options if they discovered that none of them could skate anymore. 

She had also mentioned that Lucci had volunteered to bring the birthday cake.

Kaku was fairly certain that he wasn’t meant to know this, if Nami’s tone had indicated anything when she had called to give him the details. He was honestly more curious as to how Lucci had tracked down Nami’s number, and what their conversation had consisted of, but Nami had been extremely tight lipped when he had asked.

The skating rink was a large bright blue and red building ten minutes’ walk from the subway station, with a neon lettered sign over the front of the building that declared “Buggy Bowls”. Beneath the sign, hand-written in black paint, was “and skates”. The building itself seemed to be well maintained but Kaku honestly wasn’t sure what to make of the name.

Lucci seemed a little confused as well, but neither of them could argue that this was the address Nami had given them. The building itself was distinctive if nothing else.

Inside the doors, behind the main counter was an eccentric woman with shoulder length wavy black hair and red nails that were filed into sharp points. She might not have looked so strange if she wasn’t dressed in an ankle length plum coloured jacket and a white cowboy hat.

“Welcome to Buggy Bowls, ‘ow can I help ya?” She greeted, leaning heavily on the desk top with an air of someone who would rather be anywhere else on a Saturday.

“We are here for the birthday party,” Lucci replied calmly before Kaku could, one hand settling on the small of Kaku’s back, “I bel-”

“Oh, you’re with tha’ thief?” The woman interrupted, making a disapproving clicking noise with her tongue, “in tha’ basement.”

Lucci blinked at her for a moment, his eyebrows high on his forehead, as he considered whether he would go in or walk back out. Kaku suspected that it wasn’t often that someone dared to interrupt him.

Rather than let him start a debate about appropriate customer service, or worse, walk out entirely, Kaku took Lucci’s hand gently and led him towards the lifts just behind the service counter. The doors to the lift opened silently and then slid shut behind them, it was slow but clean and mostly well maintained, until they jerked to a stop at the basement floor and the whole carriage shuddered before the doors slid open.

The basement was split in two, with one side dedicated to the large oval skate rink and the other a netted laser tag arena. The light was almost entirely artificial, from bright lights reflecting off the white-washed brick walls, with two sky lights over the skate rink. There was a group of rowdy teenagers putting on their gear in front of the laser tag arena, jostling each other as they strapped on chest plates before slipping through the net into the field.

But no immediate sign of Nami or anyone else he knew.

Lucci paused to glance around the open area, then gently tugged him towards an ajar red door with “private” stamped in white lettering across the front. As they got closer, Kaku could make out several excited voices and the hint of streamers.

Behind the door was a large room that appeared to have private access to the rink, a loud painting of a child’s birthday stretched across one wall and a long table was set up in the middle of the room. There was a plastic table cloth and assorted platters of food down the centre of the table, along with a soft drink machine at the end of the room and party hats at each seat.

The streamers appeared to have been set up by Nami, who was in the middle of directing Zoro and Usopp on the correct position of a large printed banner that proclaimed “Happy Birthday Kaku!”, while Luffy watched with a plate of party pies. She stopped when she spotted him and trotted over, wrapping her arms firmly around his neck.

“Hi, welcome, happy birthday!” She grinned, kissing his cheek and leaving behind a smear of coral lip gloss.

“Thank you,” Kaku chuckled, bending slightly to wrap his arms around her waist, “you didn’t need to go through all this effort though.”

Nami waved him off, “the owner owed me. It was nothing.”

“Thank you then, this looks great,” he chuckled, wondering what the owner could have done to owe Nami.

He had barely pulled back from Nami before he had an armful of a much shorter man and a mouthful of flyaway black hair.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAKU!” Luffy yelled, hugging him tightly enough that Kaku could feel his ribs creak in protest and he had to stop breathing for a moment.

“Thanks, Luffy,” Kaku gasped as the younger man relinquished his crushing grip and he could breathe again.

Usopp’s greeting was easier, a tip of his chin in his direction, a fist bump and birthday wishes. Marco, who Kaku suspected was a little older than the rest of them, smiled from across the room and echoed Usopp’s birthday wishes. From Sabo, a handshake and well wishes for the year to come. Ace and Chopper were both huggers, Ace’s with only slightly less enthusiasm than Luffy and Chopper’s with a few sniffles and the hint of excited tears.

Zoro waited calmly until the group had cleared off before coming up to him, a small smirk on his lips.

“Happy birthday,” he murmured, wrapping strong arms around his shoulders in a brief hug.

“Thanks,” Kaku smiled, returning the hug, “I’m glad you could come.”

He shrugged, stepping back slightly and folding his arms over his thick chest.

“Hadn’t seen you in a few months,” he replied, his sharp golden eyes flicking to Lucci curiously.

“Sorry, I guess I got a bit swept up, this is Lucci,” Kaku introduced, reaching out to brush his fingers against Lucci’s hand.

There was a beat while intelligent green eyes locked on to Zoro’s instinctive golden ones, Lucci drawing himself up slightly to emphasise the height difference while Zoro sized him up. Zoro didn’t seem bothered, if anything he slouched a little further, but eventually his lips quirked up into a smile.

“Nice to meet you,” Zoro drawled, extending his calloused right hand to shake Lucci’s.

“You too,” Lucci agreed calmly, shaking his hand as Nami came back over.

“It’s good to meet you face-to-face, thank you for coming,” Nami smiled, leaning up to kiss Lucci’s cheek in greeting, “Blueno is just helping one of the staff members bring in the last of the party platters and the skates, and then I think we’re just waiting on your other friend?”

“He should be here soon, he is punctual, but I didn’t tell him that you were getting here early to set up,” Lucci replied, kissing Nami’s cheek in return.

No sooner had Lucci finished his sentence than the door to the party room opened, the breeze of it bringing the scent of rich cigarettes and expensive cologne, and a man stepped into the room carrying a white cake box. He was shorter than both Lucci and Kaku, dressed in a plain, light-coloured shorts that stopped just above his knees, a dark blue polo shirt and tan boat shoes, but with perfectly combed blond hair that glowed golden, creamy skin and legs that went on for miles.

The leggy blond model.

Kaku didn’t know how to respond, how does one respond when one’s non-exclusive live-in partner invites his other non-exclusive sexual partner to the first partners birthday party? It certainly didn’t help that Lucci looked genuinely please to see him, allowing the one-armed hug the blond offered before he placed the cake box on the table.

It took a moment of irritated staring at the blond before Kaku registered that Lucci was talking. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and blinked up at the other man.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

Lucci kissed his cheek gently.

“This is Sanji, the friend from London that I mentioned,” he repeated, wrapping his arm more firmly around Kaku’s waist, “and stop staring at him like that or I will get jealous,” he added, his voice barely audible over the music and other conversations in the room.

Sanji offered a blinding smile, all perfect white teeth, and extended a perfectly manicured hand, “it’s nice to finally meet you, I’ve never heard Lucci talk so much about someone he’s sleeping with before.”

His voice was smooth as honey and he definitely had an accent, though Kaku couldn’t place it, but his eyes were kind and genuine, so it was hard for Kaku to find a reasonable justification not to shake the offered hand. He didn’t even seem overly bothered by Lucci’s warning glower.

“Nice to meet you,” Kaku replied uncertainly, glancing at Zoro to see if he had picked up on any weirdness between Lucci and the blond (Sanji, he reminded himself).

Both Nami and Zoro were still close by, listening without intruding, but it was Nami that noticed his discomfort first. Zoro appeared to be distracted sizing up the newcomer.

“So Sanji, do you and Lucci work together?” She asked, taking a sip of a slushy she had acquired from somewhere.

Sanji turned slightly, ocean blue eyes flicking from the top of Nami’s head down to her feet and back up again appreciatively, and his smile softened.

“Alas not, my sweet, we’d stifle each other,” he chuckled lightly, “Lucci and I met in high school, back when they thought rooming ten teenage boys in the same dorm wouldn’t breed over-familiarity.”

The light tone did nothing to ease Kaku’s nerves and he clenched his hand possessively into Lucci’s shirt. Nami, on the other hand, laughed.

“You must have plenty of stories to share then,” she grinned wickedly, probably already evaluating which stories were likely to be worth the most.

“None that he’s going to,” Lucci growled softly.

Sanji laughed lightly, grinning broadly at Nami. 

“We’ll talk,” he replied with a wink.

“So, if you don’t work with Lucci, what do you do?” Zoro asked, clearly working hard to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the ridiculous, and possibly flirtatious, behaviour.

“I’m a chef,” Sanji answered, his smile dropping a little as he sized up the muscular green-haired man.

“Oh?” Zoro raised an eyebrow and Kaku winced, recognising Zoro’s tone, “so which Pret a Manger do you work at?”

Sanji’s smile dropped completely, and Kaku took guilty pleasure from watching the angry flush that crept up his neck.

“That’s a sandwich chain, you oaf, but I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who is busy using his brain as fertiliser for weeds doesn’t know the difference between fast food and fine cuisine,” he growled, taking one long step that brought him well into Zoro’s space.

Zoro’s responding smirk was all teeth as he straightened, standing mere centimetres taller than the blond-haired man but taking advantage of whatever height difference he had.

“Is serving eggs on bread fine cuisine now?” Zoro goaded, refusing to back away even as Sanji growled again.

“I don’t work at Pret a Manger! I have my own restaurant,” Sanji snapped, his chest pressed against Zoro’s in an attempt to physically force him to back down.

“Well, I suppose it is England, doesn’t almost everyone own a fish and chippery?” Zoro’s smirk, if possible, had grown.

Sanji seemed to sense that he was losing the verbal fight, but didn’t move to retreat.

“And what is it that you do that gives you such worldly understanding of international cuisine?” He asked, trailing the back of his fingertips up Zoro’s chest to tap his lip thoughtfully, “don’t tell me,”

There was a pause while Sanji looked thoughtful and Zoro continued to smirk.

“Maybe something athletic, you have the build for it,” Sanji offered, “something traditional, definitely,” 

He paused again, “probably a sport where you wield a weapon at your opponent like a caveman and grunt like you haven’t mastered English yet. How close am I shitty swordsman?”

Zoro’s already tanned cheeks flushed darker and he took an aggressive half-step towards the blond before Nami squeezed two hands between their chests and pushed them both back a step.

“Okay, that’s enough fighting, the nice man wants to help us find skates that fit, let’s go do that,” she said loudly, pulling Zoro forcibly away from Sanji and towards the employee who was in the middle of trying to find adult skates for Chopper’s tiny feet.

Zoro blew an angry huff of air through his nose, glaring at Sanji, even as he stooped to stop Luffy careening into the food table. Evidently his skates had been already fitted, and he started excitedly regaling Zoro with an explanation of the obstacle course and limbo game that had been set up on the rink, barely able to stay in one place on the blades.

“Yes, do stop flirting, it is a birthday party and is a little unseemly,” Lucci chuckled darkly, low enough that only Sanji and Kaku could hear.

“As if I would waste my charms on that lout,” Sanji huffed, folding his arms over his chest.

“How did you know that he was a professional kendoka?” Kaku asked curiously, leaning against Lucci’s chest.

Sanji glanced over, surprised by the question.

“I compete in savate, not on the same level as him, but I watched his most recent tournament in Paris,” he replied with a friendly smile, “he is an excellent fighter.”

He paused again before he grinned at Lucci.

“I’m going to go strap on some skates and see where Blueno disappeared to, see you out there for limbo,” Sanji laughed, striding confidently over to grab a pair of roller blades.

“So, you’re not sleeping with him?” Kaku asked softly, a weight lifting at the realisation.

“Who? Sanji? No. Why would you think that?” Lucci replied, looking down at him in surprise.

“I’ll tell you later,” Kaku laughed, “come on, we’re going to be the last ones out there.”

They were the last ones on the rink but Kaku didn’t mind. It was a little strange to manoeuvre himself on the wheels at first, but teenage years spent throwing himself over walls and between buildings for fun had taught him to be fairly relaxed about his centre of gravity, and the prospect of smashing himself into the concrete.

Lucci seemed to manage, neither clinging to the wall or moving too quickly, choosing to glide calmly next to Kaku. He realised after a few laps that it probably wasn’t so different to skiing for Lucci, an activity he had mentioned enjoying a few times in passing.

Oddly, Sabo was the most adept of the group, casually skating backwards around the rink, hands in the pockets of his jeans as he taunted Blueno. He occasionally spun out into a complicated twist of blades that brought him full circle around the taller and heavier man, before darting away in front of him again.

“Roller derby,” was Ace’s explanation as he raced past, chasing Luffy and Chopper.

And Kaku had to conclude, once again, that the brothers were strange creatures that would not be restrained by society’s expectations.

Zoro, unfortunately, did not take to skates well at all. In fact, after almost an hour, he was still reluctant to let go of the wall. It wasn’t unjustified, he spent his life focusing his ability to be strong, centred and grounded, but it was making it easier for Sanji to dart past with a snarky insult and disappear around the rink with no real repercussions. Until Zoro shoulder slammed him into the adjacent wall on one lap, winding the other man and causing Chopper skate on Zoro’s outside to separate them.

It was no real surprise when Luffy won limbo, all three times that he insisted they play. It was more surprising that Sanji was every bit as flexible as Kaku had thought, coming in second in the one game he had played, something Kaku watched Zoro take note of from his position leaning against the half wall surrounding the rink.

Later, when everyone had sore feet, blisters and full stomachs, Usopp thrashed them all at a game of laser tag and two games of bowling. Kaku wasn’t going to invite him to any more games that involved accuracy and aim. It was becoming grossly unfair.

When Kaku and Lucci eventually headed home, with the only remaining slice of the citrus sponge cake that Sanji had made, and a bag of presents that Kaku hadn’t had the chance to unwrap, Kaku felt more relaxed than he had in weeks. Lucci had spent over six hours with his friends, and didn’t seem to actively hate any of them. It made it seem a little more … permanent.

And as Kaku napped on the train back into the city, he wondered – what would it take to make this last forever?


	4. The Argo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ... umm... this ended up being an absolutely massive chapter and didn't end where I thought it would because it was already so massive.
> 
> It ended up coming together a lot quicker than my other chapters because I'm getting used to writing again, which is great. I also had a lot of fun with the chapter, so I hope you enjoy it as well.
> 
> I'd like to say thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos, it's really nice to hear that people are enjoying the story as much as I am enjoying writing it.

It had only taken Nami the time for the Kaku and his three groomsmen to finish their last hands of canasta before she returned, slightly out of breath but not worried. She did glare at Franky as soon as she entered though.

“What are you doing? We have thirty-five minutes before the ceremony starts and you’re not dressed yet,” She snapped, thrusting his tie into his overly large hands.

“She’s okay little sis, we have time,” Franky smiled, but looped his tie around his neck obediently all the same.

Nami glowered at him, brandishing a lint roller at him, “hurry up, I want to get you all before the photographer arrives to get the photos of you walking down to the ceremony.”

Kid stood up and stretched, then wrapped his arms gently around Nami’s shoulders.

“It’s okay gorgeous, we have time, but you can start with me,” he murmured, a softness coming over his tone that Kaku had only ever heard directed at the redhead.

Kaku smiled softly at the couple as Zoro poured himself another glass of sake, and then straightened his sleeves once again.

“So, what happened downstairs?” Kaku asked nervously.

Obviously, if Nami was this focused then she considered the issue dealt with, but he would be able to relax more if he knew what had happened.

Nami looked over at him, barely pausing in her brushing of Kid’s suit jacket.

“Oh, that, it wasn’t anything to worry about,” she shook her head, curls dancing slightly, “Lucci ordered a delivery for the wedding night apparently but the poor man who was dropping it off could barely speak English and couldn’t understand a thing the Scottish doorman was saying.

“It would have been funnier if it wasn’t so close to the ceremony, the poor man had a parcel almost as big as he was and he just kept repeating to the usher _groom, I have to see the groom,_ and then the usher tried to ask which groom and the delivery man got all red and flustered and started saying _groom, the groom, the man_.”

Kid laughed loudly, grinning over his shoulder at Kaku.

“Guess that officially makes you the woman,” he teased.

“A title I’m sure we can share after you get married,” Kaku replied snarkily, “so did you get it all sorted?”

“Of course, I just signed for the parcel and had it taken up to the honeymoon suite. Then I spent five minutes laughing before I came back,” Nami chuckled.

“Does anyone else want to know what Lucci ordered for the wedding night that came in a box the size of an average man?” Franky mused, pulling his jacket on and running a comb through his vibrant blue hair.

“No,” Zoro replied flatly, sculling the last of his drink before standing for Nami’s brush over.

“Only if it’s X-rated,” Kid cackled, “maybe it’s a wedding dress, you know, so he can deflower you properly,” he suggested with a lewd waggle of his pierced eyebrows.

Kaku rolled his eyes.

“I promise he’s already deflowered me, even if no one else had,” he laughed.

“It was heavier than just a dress would be,” Nami replied thoughtfully, standing on her tiptoes to get the invisible fluff on Zoro’s shoulders.

“A sybian?” Kid suggested with a smirk, “and a skimpy wedding dress.”

“He could have just brought the one we have in the dungeon,” Kaku replied dryly.

“You guys installed a dungeon in the flat?” Franky asked curiously, “why didn’t you ask me to help with the build? You need to make sure the supports are properly installed, especially if you’re letting him use suspension on you at all.”

Kid laughed as Kaku blushed, fortunately he was saved by Nami batting Franky with the lint roller.

“Kaku doesn’t have a dungeon, they wouldn’t have the space for it, and whatever the package is, it’s a surprise so stop trying to spoil the romance,” she scolded, “now stoop a little so I can get you.”

“I’m still betting that whatever is in there, there’s a wedding dress as well,” Kid laughed, ignoring his girlfriend’s glare.

“How much?” Nami asked when Kid ignored her.

“Do I bet?” Kid asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Yes, and your exact bet,” she nodded, straightening Franky’s tie slightly.

“A hundred pounds and three blow jobs, that there is a wedding dress in that box,” Kid replied confidently.

“Deal,” Nami smirked, reaching out to shake Kid’s hand in agreement, “but just to clarify, you’re betting that it was in that box, the one that was delivered an hour before the ceremony?”

“Wait, what?” Kid’s eyes widened slightly, “there was another delivery to the honeymoon suite?”

“Oh baby, it’s done, let it go,” Nami laughed happily, leaning over to kiss Kid.

Kid returned the kiss with a huff of dissatisfaction, “minx.”

Zoro sighed, stretching his arms over his head.

“I keep telling you not to bet with the witch,” he shrugged, clearly having accepted that it was a lost cause.

Kid grumbled at Zoro’s back, knowing better than to start a fight now that they were ceremony ready, but clearly itching to throw something at him like the five-year-old he was.

“Exactly how many parcels have been delivered to the honeymoon suite?” Kaku asked Nami quietly when she started brushing him down with the lint roller.

“Only three, and one is for the honeymoon so it doesn’t really count,” Nami smiled.

“Do you know where we’re going?” He questioned curiously.

“It’s in two days, you can wait to find out,” she reprimanded gently.

He laughed, turning the plain platinum band on his index finger that he had been gifted a little over three years ago as the photographer knocked and then stuck her head inside the dressing room.

“Are you ready to go?” She asked with an excited smile, ushering assistants who were carrying reflectors and extra equipment into the room.

Kaku took a deep breath and smiled back, trying not to show his nerves.

“Yes, I am.”

~ ~ ~

He was not ready.

Not even slightly.

It was early-October and the weather had started getting cold, there were still leaves clinging to the trees in the parks but they had turned golden brown and started to fall. Autumn was typically Kaku’s favourite time of the year, but this year his excitement was tempered somewhat.

The build for the hotel was going well, so well, in fact, that it was almost finished. Lucci had taken him for a walk through the building last week because the construction workers had finally moved out and the interior contractors had moved in to lay out carpet on the floors, paint the walls, and fit the bathrooms and kitchens.

Lucci had started talking about Christmas in London, hoping to get flights home at the beginning of November. It hadn’t been expressly discussed, but it was there, lurking in the wings. Their time together was running out, too quickly becoming able to be counted in days instead of weeks.

And he was not ready.

Of course, more pressingly, he was not ready to have this conversation with his manager. A trade that one of the juniors that he was unofficially team leader for had gone disastrously wrong and a client had lost millions of dollars. Of course, this was part of the market, you couldn’t expect to gain millions if you weren’t willing to risk millions, but the trade had not been recommended. So, the client wanted someone’s head.

Kaku was reasonably certain that he wasn’t going to be fired, the company didn’t quite have reasonable grounds, but he knew that it wasn’t going to be pleasant. What made it worse, for Kaku at least, was that the grad who had messed up the trade was the son of one of the partners, and therefore, practically immune from repercussions.

So, it would come down to Kaku’s failure to supervise – a task that he was not responsible, or compensated, for; and his failure to provide adequate training – also not a responsibility that he had been formally given. Both these points he hoped, but doubted, his manager would listen to and understand so he could avoid a formal written warning.

He was trying to stay calm; he didn’t want to be angry in the meeting, or apologetic. It was going to be a careful balance of being sympathetic but enforcing that he wasn’t responsible for the trade, or the trader.

He could do this.

But he wasn’t ready to.

* * *

Kaku kicked the door of his apartment shut behind himself, probably harder than he needed to, but he wasn’t in the mood to care.

“She put me on probation!” He yelled angrily across the apartment when he could see Lucci tucked calmly on the couch in the living room, a novel open in his hands and his reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.

“Good afternoon Kaku, how was your day?” Lucci greeted, glancing up briefly from his book.

“She put me on probation! She pulled me into this meeting and sat down with a representative from HR and the partner whose spawn fucked up, and then started talking about my responsibilities as a team leader and how disappointed they were in my training and supervisory skills.

“And when I point out that I’m not a team leader, I am a senior trader who is seated with a group of graduates, she pulls out this bullshit job description and tries to explain that I was promoted when I received my annual pay rise three months ago and that I signed my new job description stating that I understood the responsibilities of my new role.”

Lucci watched him curiously from over the top of his book, letting him rant while he paced the hallway in front of the kitchen.

“And she wouldn’t even let me see this document that I supposedly signed, and I tried to explain that in order for it to be binding on me I would have had to be given a copy and I didn’t receive one. Then the HR rep chimes in with an ‘oh but we sent it to you, you must have misplaced it’,

“And then the partner starts talking about how I was a risk because I was never a strong trader, but I was reliable and dedicated to the company so they had promoted me, but my behaviour has shown that I have not been paying enough attention to my role,” Kaku continued, twisting the platinum ring on his index finger angrily.

“And then I just sat there, for forty minutes, because they clearly weren’t going to let me get a word in, and had manipulated my job description so I was responsible. They spent forty minutes talking about how they now _had to_ pay someone to go back over all my work with a fine-toothed comb to see if I had made any other mistakes, and that I was on probation for three months while they completed this and if _anything_ else came out of their investigation then they were going to fire me.

“I also have to attend a two-week retraining starting on Monday and was forced to sign a document accepting a fifteen-thousand dollar pay cut and an immediate demotion. They said that if I didn’t sign it in the meeting then I wasn’t committed to my future at the company, and-”

“So quit.”

The statement was so blunt that Kaku had to pause mid-rant and blink at Lucci.

“What?”

“Quit,” Lucci repeated, turning the page of his book nonchalantly.

“I can’t just quit my job,” Kaku replied slowly, anger simmering in the pit of his stomach.

Lucci might be in the position to drop several hundred dollars on whatever took his fancy and not blink, but Kaku didn’t have the kind of savings that people needed in order to quit their jobs at the drop of a hat. Not to mention, if he left his job in his current situation, he could kiss a reference goodbye and his industry wasn’t so hard pressed to find decent candidates that he could just waltz into another position. It was New York, people who left their jobs without something else lined up ended up homeless.

Lucci glanced up at him, peering over the black rim of his glasses, one eyebrow raised imperiously.

“Of course you can,” he paused to place a bookmark in his book and place it on the coffee table, “honestly, I don’t quite understand how you have let yourself settle for this kind of mediocrity until now.”

“What?” Kaku repeated, dumbfounded.

“I am not going to continue this conversation unless you use your full sentences,” Lucci replied evenly.

“You think I’m mediocre?!” Kaku snapped, his tone rising slightly as he clenched his hands as his sides, “where do you get off calling me _mediocre_? I graduated top of my class in high school and went to one of the most prestigious universities in the country, where I graduated in the top five percent of my cohort and was offered a position in a world-renowned company!

“Just because I wasn’t born with some innate talent that made me a genius in my field, or the ability to start a business and have it turn to gold under my fingertips doesn’t make the life choices I have made somehow inferior to yours!”

Lucci watched him coolly over the back of the couch, twisting slightly in his seat to at least make proper eye contact.

“You are too young to be settling for someone else’s ideas of what success looks like, that is what makes mediocrity,” He replied after a beat, his tone calm and moderated.

“And who the fuck-”

“Do not swear at me,” Lucci interrupted.

“-do you think you are to judge why I’m doing what I’m doing?! Do you know how many people manage to do what you have done?! I have a good job, that keeps a roof over my head and food on my table, with good opportunities for progression. If we judged the world by your standards of success then nearly everyone would be mediocre!” Kaku continued, his tone getting increasingly louder as he slammed his satchel bag against the kitchen counter.

“Nearly everyone _is_ mediocre,” Lucci replied, picking his book up again from the coffee table and opening it, “but I expect better from you.”

Kaku dropped his hold on his bag, momentarily floored by whatever sort of back-handed complimentary slap to the face that was.

“But if you want to settle for being mediocre, then continue to go into a job that you grow less passionate about every day, working for a manager who you despise and puts you down at every opportunity, with peers who take advantage of your goodwill and natural talent, and I will go back to London without you. I am not going to waste my energy on unexceptional people,” Lucci continued calmly as he resumed his reading.

It took a moment before Kaku could formulate any kind of response.

“ _Fuck you_ ,” He snarled, stalking over to his bedroom door and slamming it hard behind him.

Lucci could bloody well find somewhere else to sleep. Hell, he could find somewhere else to rot.

Who the fuck did he think he was?

* * *

It was mid-afternoon.

If Kaku had to guess then he thought it had been about six hours since there was last movement in the apartment, when Lucci had closed the front door to leave for work.

Lucci hadn’t gone for a run that morning, nor had he come to bed last night, instead he came into the room a little after seven to get fresh clothes and had paused in the doorway to assess Kaku’s mood. Kaku had stayed facing the wall, away from the door, and had ignored the other man.

After five minutes, Lucci had left to shower and sometime after that the front door had opened and then closed.

It was a little after nine when Kaku had emailed his manager and turned his out-of-office on for his emails, taking personal leave for the remaining three days of the week. It was the first time he had taken leave in the four years that he had been working for the firm. He had also muted his work emails and then turned off his mobile, he’d prefer not to know what his manager’s response was until Monday.

Then he had fallen back asleep for an indeterminate amount of time, waking feeling groggy and over-tired, with a small amount of confusion as to where he was. The light coming through the window was soft and warm, dulled from the sun passing behind the building that he lived in, and he had a cramp in his calf from sleeping curled on his side but he didn’t get up immediately.

Instead, he spent probably close to an hour watching the light play on the wall, eyes glazed over and zoned out.

He had known for months that he was out of his league in his relationship with Lucci, that he wasn’t the man’s intellectual equal, he didn’t provide any skills or support to his work, and he wasn’t good-looking enough to just be arm-candy. He had also known, and had been dreading, that he wasn’t going to be going back to London with the man in five weeks.

He had known all of this since they had met in May.

But.

When Lucci had thrown out the confirmation, at first all Kaku could do was lash out, hurt. He didn’t want Lucci to see him like that, he wanted Lucci to think that he was special, worth his time and affection. He didn’t want Lucci to think he was average. How else could he react when his partner was telling him that he wasn’t good enough? Kaku was allowed to think that, the rest of the world was allowed to think that, but Lucci should think that he was better. Worthy.

So, he had stormed off, shutting himself in his bedroom, turning on sound-cancelling headphones and playing himself angsty music about hating the world until he fell asleep. He would admit, it was an immature response, but at the same time, it had given him space to process his emotions without involving Lucci’s.

Of course, Lucci’s emotions were important, and if he genuinely didn’t think there was anything extraordinary about Kaku then there wasn’t any point in trying to pursue the relationship any further, but it would be easier to have _that_ conversation once Kaku was less strung out from the day he had endured at work and had slept properly.

Which, he supposed, he had achieved now.

Of course, it had also now been over twenty-four hours since he had last eaten so he should take care of that before Lucci got home. Otherwise, the argument would just be perpetuated by Kaku being hungry.

He wasn’t hungry just yet though, and an hour of staring at the lights on the wall had given him time to process the day before a little.

Yes – Lucci had said some awful things, and they had hurt, but he wasn’t the first person to voice concerns that Kaku wasn’t happy where he was working, or even in the industry he had chosen. Zoro had been arguing with him for years, ever since he entered university and dropped kendo, that he was giving up his passions.

Nami had commented on more than one occasion that he didn’t seem like the type of personality to enjoy stock-broking, and had mentioned when he complained for too long or too persistently that he should try to find a hobby that wasn’t work-related or involving a glass of alcohol. Even Luffy had pulled a face when he had explained what he did for work and then made a comment that suggested that if he enjoyed his work, he needed to use words like ‘awesome’ and ‘fun’ more.

Maybe his job did make him miserable, but he was also in a relatively stable industry and could afford to live by himself in New York City. Wasn’t that just the compromise you made? Jobs you were passionate about didn’t make money, and jobs that made money weren’t enjoyable.

But then, Nami had turned her passion into an extremely lucrative business, and neither Zoro or Luffy were motivated by money, but they made enough to get by, so maybe he was wrong.

Kaku rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling instead. Thinking about it made his head hurt, and he didn’t have an immediate answer.

The other consideration, a small hope that had been playing on repeat in Kaku’s mind since he had woken up in the afternoon, was that Lucci had mentioned London. Of course, he had mentioned it because he wasn’t going to take Kaku with him if nothing changed, but that meant that Lucci had been thinking about it.

Right?

Kaku sighed, flicking his quilt back from his chest and rolling out of bed. A glance at the watch that he had left on his bedside table told him that it was a little after three in the afternoon, which left him time to have some food and maybe go for a run before Lucci came home. Maybe a clear head would help him with whatever the next conversation would bring.

With no small amount of trepidation, he turned his phone back on as he padded into the kitchen. Five missed calls from work, and three voicemails but no text messages. Nothing that couldn’t wait until Monday then, and as long as he showed up with a note from someone, taking personal days wasn’t enough to fire him either.

Lucci hadn’t messaged him either though, and Kaku wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad thing.

Cooking helped though, he didn’t make anything fancy, but even the little egg and bacon omelettes he made were enough to clear his headspace, as well as the left-over grogginess from sleeping for close to sixteen hours. He also took the initiative to prepare a mild curry and set it in the slow cooker. He suspected that whatever conversation he and Lucci had tonight, neither of them would be in the right mood to be handling sharp knives in the kitchen, and Lucci didn’t really like to have takeaway if he could reasonably avoid it.

Leaving the curry in the slow cooker, Kaku changed into loose tracksuit pants and a tank top. A quick check of his phone confirmed that a round trip run to Central Park would be roughly seven miles, and if ran his average mile he’d had enough time to get home and shower before Lucci got home, which was typically between five thirty and six.

And the curry would be ready at seven, so despite sleeping through most of the day, he could pretend his afternoon was organised.

The run was pleasant, the temperature was cool and the streets were less busy than normal as most people were still at work. Even Central Park wasn’t as busy as it could have been, but it was the middle of the week. He had forgotten a little how freeing it was to have the concrete pound under his runners, the wind in his hair and the thump of a dance bass in his ears.

He was flushed and breathing hard when he eventually got back to his apartment, only to be surprised to see Lucci’s keys already in the bowl by the entry when he returned. He paused to take off his headphones, carefully peering into the living room to see if the other man was waiting for him.

He wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room, so he ventured towards his bedroom instead, to spot Lucci in the middle of changing the bedsheets, his curly hair tied up in a loose bun on top of his head with a few fly-aways falling around his face. He cleared his throat as he pulled off his runners, tucking them away in his cupboard.

Lucci glanced up and smiled, before finishing tucking in the flat sheet around the corner of the bed.

“Welcome home,” his tone was even, which made it hard to read.

He didn’t seem annoyed, despite Kaku having relegated him to sleeping on the couch the night before. The couch was barely long enough to comfortably seat two adults, so Kaku could imagine that it would have been extremely uncomfortable for Lucci to somehow sleep on it. Not to mention, the pillows were all in the bedroom and the nights weren’t quite warm enough to make do with just a throw anymore.

“I was just going to shower,” Kaku replied, making a vague gesture towards the bathroom.

Lucci nodded, gently tossing the pillows back onto the bed and laying out the quilt.

“Take your time,” he responded, still with the same calm and even tone.

“After, we should-”

“Talk. I know. Shower first though,” Lucci interrupted.

Kaku nodded, walking over to his chest of drawers to pull out a change of clothes and then slink into the bathroom. He didn’t know how this conversation was going to go, and that made him nervous. At the same time, he had spent the whole day avoiding his various problems and at least, whatever the outcome of the discussion with Lucci was going to be, he actually wanted to try to clear the air with the other man.

When he came back from the bathroom, he had changed into a pair of comfortable jeans that had seen so many seasons with him that they had faded to an almost grey-blue. They were extremely flattering, for couch chic, though, so they had stayed. The shirt he had pulled out was a long-sleeved olive shirt that he had gotten in university when he had joined the kendo team, for the one semester before he had dropped the sport. Comfortable, but flattering, so at least if Lucci dumped him he didn’t look like a depressed teenager with no style.

During the time he spent in the shower, Lucci had moved to the living room and had started the sheets in the washing machine. Kaku wasn’t exactly sure why they had been changed, maybe Lucci had just needed something to do while he waited for Kaku.

“I wasn’t expecting you home this early; dinner won’t be ready until seven,” Kaku informed the other man softly as he settled into the armchair opposite him, a bottle of water in his hands.

“I did message you when I left the hotel, but I guess you didn’t get it while you were out,” Lucci nodded, taking a sip of his coffee.

Not a good sign then, coffee in the afternoon meant Lucci didn’t expect to be asleep until after midnight.

Kaku pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked his notifications, there was a text from Lucci that had been silenced during his run, as well as another missed call from his work.

“Sorry,” he apologised, placing the phone on the coffee table.

“It’s okay,” Lucci shook his head and paused, then set his coffee down on the table as well, “you didn’t go to work today?”

The question was cautiously asked, and some part of Kaku considered whether Lucci was nervous that after the fight yesterday Kaku had just been fired and that was why he had spent the morning in bed.

“I took a couple of days off, I needed to get a little bit of distance,” he paused, “and I might need to speak to a someone about my rights in case they do decide to fire me.”

“So, you want to stay? Despite what happened yesterday?” Lucci asked evenly, his hands clasped loosely in his lap, giving nothing away about his emotional investment in this conversation one way or another.

Kaku shifted uncomfortably in his seat and scratched the back of his neck, then settled his hands in his lap as well to twist the platinum ring he had been gifted on his birthday.

“I don’t know,” he replied eventually, “I think… it might depend on you.”

Lucci frowned, “you need to make your own decision, it’s your job.”

“I know, that’s not what I meant,” he paused and took a low breath, “what did you mean yesterday? I was … not in the best frame of mind to be listening to what you meant, so I think I was focusing on what you were saying instead and I just- I guess I need to know … what _this_ is,” Kaku made a gesture between the two of them and then set his hands back in his lap.

Lucci chuckled softly, and then leant back against the couch, relaxing slightly.

“ _This_ is a sexual relationship between two adults who have also chosen to share their living space,” Lucci teased, and received a glare from Kaku for his efforts.

He paused, leaning forward to take a sip of his coffee as he collected his response. The response to the actual question buried under Kaku’s uncertain questions. He leant back in the couch again when he was collected, folding one leg over the other and laying his arm along the back of the couch. He looked like he was trying to look comfortable, rather than actually being relaxed.

Which, Kaku supposed, was fair. He wasn’t exactly relaxed either.

“Honestly, I did not anticipate this being anything serious. Starting a serious relationship with someone who lives on the other side of the world is a recipe for disaster. But, now that I am here and have been living with you for five months, I find myself reluctant to leave New York without you,” Lucci sighed.

“I was honestly hoping that you would ask to come back with me, you seemed excited by the travel and the idea of Christmas in another country, and if you asked then it wouldn’t be me requesting you uproot your life here and move for me,” he admitted after a breath.

“You want me to go to London with you?” Kaku asked slowly, “permanently or just for Christmas?”

He wanted to clarify before he got his hopes up, though he was reasonably certain that he had understood what Lucci was asking.

“I want you to move in with me, I want you to move home with me. To England, in November,” Lucci replied calmly, “I know that it is early to make that kind of decision, but I also know I am enjoying your companionship and I want to give our relationship that opportunity.”

Kaku picked up his bottle, turning it slowly in his hands.

“But you wouldn’t stay in New York for me?” He asked.

“I might,” Lucci replied slowly, “if I thought that you needed to be in New York.”

Kaku glanced at him sharply, anger simmering behind his chestnut eyes and a biting reply on his tongue before Lucci held up a hand.

“Before you start yelling again, just listen. If I am wrong, then we can have different discussion about where we want this to go, and whether I stay in New York or you come to London,” he waited until Kaku had leant back in his seat and nodded for him to continue.

“You are not happy at your job, on your best days you tolerate your work, but you do not find it challenging or particularly enjoyable. It pays the bills. Which is fine, if you were an ordinary person, with ordinary friends, content to lead an ordinary life,”

Kaku clenched his hand around the empty water bottle, causing it to crumple, but didn’t interrupt.

“But you are not ordinary, and you are not content, and I do not want you to be ordinary or content. I think you might have gotten yourself stuck in a rut here, and maybe a change of scenery, a change of perspective might help you reflect a little on what you actually _want_ out of your life.

“And if you take three months away from work in London and decide that you still want to work with stocks, then I am not going to stop you, I just want you to take some time to think about it. I think it will help.”

Kaku huffed, placing the bottle back on the table and away from further mutilation.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Zoro, not everyone needs to aim to be the best in the world at something,” he sighed.

“Why shouldn’t you be the best in the world at whatever you choose to do?” Lucci replied with a shrug, “someone is going to be, it may as well be you.”

“That is not how it works for normal people,” Kaku grumbled, folding his arms over his chest.

“Stop trying to be normal.”

Kaku glared at Lucci for a long moment, the other man keeping eye contact until Kaku broke and turned to look out the window onto the fire escape instead.

“Okay, so let’s assume that you and Zoro and Nami and everyone else is right and I need a change of profession, and leave that clusterfuck in a basket to be unpacked later. All my friends live in New York,” Kaku voiced after a few minutes of thoughtful silence.

“At the moment,” Lucci conceded, “but both Nami and Zoro already travel extensively, and Nami has made it clear that she would be more than happy to visit frequently.”

“Has she?” Kaku laughed softly.

“She has,” Lucci smiled, “I also got the impression that she strongly encouraged you moving with me.”

“She’s mentioned something to that effect,” he agreed, plucking at his sleeve.

“So, I do not think the distance would be an insurmountable hurdle, and if it seemed like it was getting hard or you were missing some of your friends, we can always travel back. It is only a seven-hour flight, and I have Blueno and a hotel in the city,” Lucci offered, his fingers tapping a slow beat on the back of the couch.

Kaku stood, circling around the coffee table carefully before dropping onto the couch next to Lucci, leaning his shoulder into his side ever so slightly. Lucci’s arm dropped off the back of the couch to settle lightly around Kaku’s shoulders. It was gentle affection, careful, so as not to break the tentative calm and risk another fight, but Kaku appreciated it all the same.

Kaku rested his cheek against Lucci’s chest, staring at the painting he had hung over the television on the wall.

“What would you do about my job? If it was you?” He asked eventually, speaking softly as rain started to patter against the windowpane.

“I would quit. If you give them four weeks’ notice, then they will probably opt to pay you out instead of having you come in, especially if they think you are a liability. I would probably speak to a lawyer as well, but that is up to you,” Lucci replied bluntly.

“So, quit, take the pay out and my leave, and then spend five weeks packing my apartment?” Kaku laughed.

“You could, if that was what you wanted,” Lucci’s response was slightly hesitant, as though he was very aware that Kaku hadn’t given any indication that he had a preference one way or another.

Kaku curled a little closer to his side, picking up Lucci’s hand out of his lap to play absently with his fingers.

“It would be crazy, to abandon everything I have here. I don’t have a huge amount of savings, and moving would eat through just about all of it. If it took longer than three months to get a job, or if something happened between us…” Kaku trailed off, not wanting to jinx their relationship but also needing to air the concern.

Lucci smiled into his hair, nuzzling behind his ear gently.

“Well, by my calculations, even if the worst happened and something did happen between us, I owe you six months of free housing,” he replied, “but you haven’t said that you won’t.”

“We’ll talk,” Kaku laughed softly, leaning up to kiss Lucci.

* * *

Lucci ended up taking the rest of the week off work as well and they took a completely spontaneous three-night trip to Vermont together. Lucci had woken up at his usual time on Thursday morning, and had simply started packing, and then bundled Kaku first into the shower, then into a cab, and then onto a plane, and around midmorning Kaku had blinked up at him and realised that they were in a completely different state.

Lucci had hired a car from Burlington Airport, and had driven them to a small lodge outside of Stowe that was nestled in the mountains and surrounded by deciduous trees in the middle of shedding their autumn foliage. They had an indoor jacuzzi, and a private deck, as well as a fireplace at the end of the king bed.

There was breakfast delivered to the room in the morning, and comfortable dinners in front of the fireplace in the evening. There were long walks through the surrounding acreage followed by late nights tucked under a heavy down quilt and kisses. Slow kisses that melted away Kaku’s understanding of who he was, or where he was, until all he could really focus on was the slide of silky strands of hair between his fingers and Lucci’s hands, warm on his waist, his hips, his chest, his ass.

It was after a bath and another round of long kisses, and even more drawn-out orgasms, on Saturday night that Lucci asked properly. His voice was rough, and he was slightly breathless, the curls of his hair falling around his face like a dense curtain, as he leant down to kiss Kaku.

“Please,” he asked between kisses, his hips still pinning Kaku’s to the bed, his erection hot and heavy and pressed against all the right spots inside Kaku.

“Please?” Kaku echoed, his thighs clenching around Lucci’s sides, his ankles locked at the small of his back, as he rolled his hips up into Lucci’s.

“Please come home with me,” Lucci asked, pulling back to break Kaku’s grip around his waist before grabbing his knees and pressing them to his chest to take control of the angle and speed that he thrust into the man below him.

Kaku groaned, shifting to hold his knees close to his chest, the change in angle sending warmth up his spine as Lucci brushed past his prostate. After sitting on the edge of his orgasm for almost an hour, the pleasure was intoxicating and distracting and any chance of holding a conversation disappeared.

Later, when Lucci had rolled to the side of the bed and cleaned them both off, enough that they were at least comfortable under the white sheets, Kaku rolled onto his side to smile at Lucci and trace the aristocratic panes of his face with the pads of his fingers.

“Yes,” he murmured, waiting until Lucci’s clear green eyes opened curiously before he repeated himself, “yes, I’ll go with you.”

Lucci had smiled softly, rolling Kaku closer to kiss him again, and they had fallen asleep to the crackle of the fireplace.

Kaku had quit his job as soon as his manager had entered on Monday, by walking into her office with the written notice before she had even put down her bag. He then sent the email to HR as soon as he returned to his desk. It was a light feeling, having the weight of four years lift off him.

Lucci had been right, they had accepted his notice but chose to pay out his last four weeks instead of having him work. The risk that he might take trade secrets somewhere else was evidently too high. He had booked his one-way ticket to London that afternoon.

The next five weeks were busy, but not unbearable. Packing was awful, Kaku hadn’t moved since he had graduated university and suddenly four years’ worth of accumulated _stuff_ needed to be sorted into boxes to be shipped to London, bags to be donated or sold, or bags to be thrown out.

He was also making a concentrated effort to enjoy the last of whatever living in New York had to offer. It would be different the next time because he would be visiting, not staying, and there were aspects of living in a city that just weren’t the same when you were just passing through. This coincided happily with attempts to see as much of everyone important as he could.

Zoro was out of the country, again, when he texted him to let him know, and wouldn’t be back until two weeks before he left. However, Nami offered to organise Zoro’s twenty-sixth birthday party for the night before Kaku left, and booked a booth at Blueno’s.

It would be almost the same as when he had first met Zoro’s group of eccentric friends three years earlier.

Lucci was busy as well, with the final touches of the hotel, but Kaku could tell he was pleased and excited in equal measure, even if they saw less of each other over the following weeks than they ever had for the five months that preceded them.

Nami was insistent that evenings were hers now, she was willing to share them, but barely. She and Lucci got along well, which Kaku was pleased about, but Zoro seemed a little frustrated that the first evening he was back in New York, she turned up at the diner that they organised dinner at. She missed a few nights, her work didn’t stop even if Kaku no longer had to, but on average Kaku would have guessed he saw Nami five times a week, every week until the 11th of November.

She wasn’t the only one though, even Chopper made a valiant effort to reorganise his largely uncontrollable schedule to have dinner with him three times. Each time he had been sat down and carefully questioned about his health, and given a laundry list of advice for various concerns that he might encounter. Sabo’s demanding schedule made space for lunch three times, and dinner once, and Ace was free whenever Marco was, and twice when he wasn’t.

Luffy seemed content to follow Kaku around while he completed various necessary evils (visa applications and shipping quotes among other tasks), and attempted to help him pack. He also kidnapped his laptop for forty minutes one Wednesday afternoon and came back with a new game installed.

“So we can chat whenever,” he shrugged, “and you can try to be king of the pirates if you want, but I’ll have to defeat you if you try.”

His smile was genuine, and terrifying, but the graphics on the starting menu were beautiful so he took the gift with a smile and agreed to log in at least once a week.

Usopp he only saw twice, but his timing clashed with the younger man’s exams so he could hardly fault him. It was nice though, Usopp had spent a few years between high school and university travelling, and he was full of insightful advice to help make the process less stressful. Even if the stories of his travels were slightly exaggerated.

Five weeks later, on a Thursday night, Kaku found himself pressed into a booth between Nami and Lucci, sitting opposite Zoro as Blueno brought over a tray of flaming shots. Blueno’s Bar looked the same as it did three years earlier, before Zoro had introduced him to his friends and before he had been adopted by Luffy. Before even he and Nami were friends, which seemed strange to think after three years of seeing each other almost weekly.

Things were different of course, Lucci’s arm around his shoulders was a weighty reminder of that. There was no apartment on Cornelia Street anymore, he had surrendered the keys two days earlier and had been living out of a suitcase in a penthouse suite in Lucci’s hotel.

_The Argo_ was finished, and it was gorgeous. It had had its grand opening on Saturday the weekend prior. Every room was booked out for thirteen months, which had floored Kaku but Lucci had merely shrugged, a pleased smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

The other noticeable difference was the other new face at the party. Sanji had sauntered into the bar, dressed in an immaculate three-piece suit, shortly after Zoro had arrived, with another cake box. Zoro hadn’t seemed surprised to see him, but despite extensive questioning, he had not given any explanation of why he was there.

It was strange to watch them interact, because there was still violence and swearing even as Sanji passed Zoro a platter of onigiri that he had summoned from an unknown location. Kaku knew damn well that Japanese snack food was not, and never would be, a feature on Blueno’s menu.

He might have still been confused as to why the blond was back in New York, at the bar for Zoro’s birthday, if he hadn’t happened upon them in the corridor outside the men’s bathroom. Zoro was pressed against the wall, his head tipped back and his eyes closed as Sanji knelt in front of him, Zoro’s cock so far down his throat that Kaku knew with absolute certainty that the man must have had perfect control of his gag reflex.

He had returned to the table with a muttered excuse that there was a queue and he could wait. Lucci had smirked, and then gone back to talking to Marco about the winter fashion show.

Zoro’s birthday cake, served with candles and another round of shots, was a dark chocolate and brandy cake with whipped cream, for those of the group that preferred their desserts a little sweeter. It was the first time Kaku had ever watched Zoro finish a slice of birthday cake, and then actually hide the remaining slice from Luffy’s questing paws. Sanji had watched him eat with an extremely self-satisfied smirk, taking slow sips from a half-full glass of red wine.

Later in the evening, long after Kaku had followed Lucci’s lead and swapped alcoholic beverages for mocktails and water, Ace had yawned widely and looked down at his shoulder, where Chopper had fallen asleep, and suddenly the mood turned a little sombre.

It had been organised in advance that only Zoro would see him off at the airport, to avoid a huge group of people running amuck in the terminal. He had asked Nami if she had wanted to come as well, but she had declined. Apparently, seeing someone off at the airport was too much like a permanent farewell and she had already booked flights to spend almost six weeks in England from late-January, so it was only going to be a little over two months until he saw her again anyway.

There had been some discussion that Luffy and Ace might join her for at least some of this time. Marco had fashion week in Paris at the start of March, an event that Ace attended but abhorred. He had commented once that there was very little that he disliked more than someone trying to curb his eating, and he had been mistaken for one of the models far too many times.

  
This time Marco had bribed Ace by tentatively agreeing to take two weeks beforehand in England with Nami, and by bringing Luffy. Chopper had also promised that when he received the dates for his next few weeks of leave, he would let him know.

So, despite the teary goodbyes that followed, Kaku knew that it really wouldn’t be that long before he saw his friends again. Living in another country would just change the frequency a little.

When the attention finally turned to wishing Zoro his final happy birthdays for the night, Kaku returned to Lucci’s side, wrapping an arm around his waist and leaning his head on his shoulder. Sanji was leant against the wall nearby, playing absently with the same gold lighter Kaku had spotted months earlier in _Le Bernardin_. Although there had definitely been patches of time where the world had narrowed down to whatever conversation Kaku had been having and the glass of alcohol in his hand, Kaku was reasonably certain that Sanji had only left the group twice. So, it made sense that he was keen for a cigarette.

When Zoro left the larger group to join them, Kaku pretended not to notice the sustained eye between the blond and his friend before Sanji pushed away from the wall casually.

“Happy birthday moss-for-brains,” he offered flippantly, before turning to Lucci, “I’ll see you in London in three days, I’ll bring dinner.”

“Text me when you land safely,” Lucci instructed calmly, clasping Sanji’s forearm in a firm grip.

“Travel safely,” Sanji replied, tugging the taller man closer to wrap one arm around his shoulders.

There was another meaningful look towards Zoro, and then the blond disappeared up the stairs and into the early hours of the morning after the rest of the party. Kaku looked at Zoro, having pilfered a room key from Lucci, and gestured his head towards the door.

Lucci wanted to stay and help Blueno pack up, probably to say goodbye properly away from prying eyes. He would be seeing Sanji again in a few days, but Kaku wasn’t sure when Lucci would see Blueno again.

Lucci caught Kaku’s elbow, as Zoro was pulling on his jacket to leave, and kissed him gently.

“I’ll see you in the morning, sleep well,” Lucci murmured into the kiss.

“You too, see you in the morning,” Kaku replied as he pulled away to pull on his coat.

The street outside was cold and the wind blew bitterly through the narrow street as Zoro hailed a cab.

“This feels a little surreal,” Kaku admitted softly, standing close to Zoro to absorb some of his body heat.

Zoro looked over at him, his hands tucked deep in his pockets as the cab slowed and eventually stopped in front of them. He held the door for Kaku to scoot across the back seat and then got in after him, waiting until after Kaku had given directions to the driver to respond.

“It’s good though, right?” he asked quietly, leaning into the door so he could look at him properly.

Kaku looked out the cab window at the dancing lights of the city and eventually nodded.

“It is, I just didn’t expect to be the sort of person who picked up and relocated my whole life for someone,” he shrugged.

“I’m not, you’re always been a pushover,” Zoro teased with a smirk.

“Excuse me?” Kaku glared at him, reaching out to grind a knuckle into the muscles over Zoro’s ribs.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Zoro batted him away, rubbing at his side, “you’re not.”

Kaku leant back, folding his arms over his chest as they both watched the lights outside the windows.

“I guess, what I meant,” Zoro paused for a long moment to think, “I wasn’t that shocked, you’ve always kinda liked having someone look after you.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Kaku laughed, leaning forward to tap his phone on the payment terminal as the cab stopped in the drop off bay in front of _The Argo_.

“Yeah,” Zoro agreed, getting out of the cab, and waiting for Kaku to join him before they walked into the lobby, “but most people don’t go for sadistic overlords with riding crops to look after them.”

“He’s not a sadistic overlord,” Kaku complained quietly, waving at the receptionist as he made his way over to the dedicated penthouse elevator.

Zoro hummed, his disagreement evident in his tone.

“He’s not!” Kaku protested.

“Don’t stress, I like the guy,” he shrugged, “I just also think he’s got you figured out, and that he takes enjoyment from puppeteering the people around him.”

Kaku closed his mouth with a snap and frowned at the ornately decorated elevator doors.

“But it’s also really obvious that he’s crazy about you, in his own way,” Zoro offered, ruffling Kaku’s hair affectionately, “otherwise, I’d never let you do this kinda crazy shit.”

Kaku laughed, running a hand through his hair to straighten it out, as the elevator pulled to a smooth stop on the top floor of the hotel and the doors opened into the entry hallway.

“Did you want some water?” Kaku offered, pushing open the main doors into the living room as Zoro looked around curiously.

The room featured floor to ceiling glass windows, and a view over the top of the buildings in front of the hotel and Central Park beyond. There was a small bar area in the back corner of the room and plush patterned carpet on the floor. The same carpet featured in both bedrooms and didn’t leave a rug burn.

Not that Kaku had tested.

Zoro glanced back at Kaku as he opened one of the cupboard doors to pull out two bottles of water from the fridge, and a bag of chips.

“So, did you pack appropriate clothing for your future as a sugar baby?” He laughed, snatching a bottle of water.

“I was meant to pack clothing?” Kaku asked innocently.

“I guess if removing it is too much hassle for him, then no,” Zoro shook his head, following Kaku into the second bedroom, where two double beds with textured headboards and half testers hung with heavy drapes were positioned against one wall.

“It’s not like that,” Kaku smiled, sitting comfortably on one of the raised mattresses.

“Are you sure? How rich is this guy?” Zoro asked, eyeing the chandelier in the middle of the room with distrust.

“I haven’t asked honestly, but I think the nightly asking rate for this suite is somewhere north of seven thousand dollars,” Kaku admitted, offering the open bag of chips to Zoro, “and this isn’t the most luxurious suite, it’s just the only one with two bedrooms.”

“And you picked this guy up in a bar,” Zoro laughed, “Does Nami know how much he’s worth?”

“She’s probably looked it up,” he shrugged, “it’s not important though.”

Zoro watched him for a moment, taking a slow sip of water.

“I know it’s not important, and I’m glad you don’t think it is, but realistically, you’re going to have to know what you’re getting into,” he held his hands up defensively as Kaku opened his mouth to argue, “so you can protect your relationship. Money matters to a lot of people, and he’s clearly got more money than most people could dream of. Just think about it.”

Kaku sighed but nodded.

“Later,” he relented, taking a few of the chips to snack on and shuffling back to relax against the headboard.

Zoro joined him, back to the headboard and shoulder pressed against Kaku’s.

“I will miss you,” Zoro admitted quietly, “until now, New York was home because you and Luffy were here.”

“Luffy’s still here, and I’m not so far away. I’m barely even two hours flight away from Mihawk. I can be your escape weekend when the nutter tosses you out to fight the wildlife again,” Kaku laughed, nudging his shoulder gently against Zoro’s.

Zoro laughed as well, “he only does that when he wants a night with his boyfriend.”

“There’s someone on this planet crazy enough to date him?” Kaku asked in disbelief.

“You don’t want to know,” Zoro shook his head.

“Speaking of people crazy enough to date swordsmen, Sanji was very _enthusiastic_ about your birthday present outside the men’s room,” Kaku smirked.

Zoro glanced over at him with a confused frown, which slowly morphed into an embarrassed blush.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied dismissively.

“Sure you don’t,” Kaku hummed.

“I didn’t think anyone saw,” Zoro groaned, pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes.

“I don’t think anyone else did,” Kaku replied sympathetically, rubbing Zoro’s shoulder.

“He’s just- It’s only the fourth time it’s happened. He’s just infuriating. He waltzes in with his stupid face and those fucking pants, and I just want to pound him into the pavement, and instead I just end up pounding his face, or his ass, or between his thighs. Have you seen his thighs? They should be illegal,” he moaned into his hands.

Kaku laughed, “honestly, I hated him for about two weeks, I thought he was sleeping with Lucci.”

“God, could he be? Please? I feel like I’ve lost my mind. He’s all smarmy and chauvinistic and he dresses like a pretentious private school twit, but then he’s got those legs and the stamina to go for hours and a fucking dirty mouth.”

“I didn’t know you were into that,” Kaku teased, stroking his hair now.

“Neither~” Zoro whined into a pillow.

“But you guys didn’t hook up at my birthday, did you?” Kaku asked.

“No, he turned up to my match in Spain,” he sighed, “I blame post-match endorphins, all he did was brush past me and congratulate me on my win and then we were naked in the shower rooms.”

“And the second time?” Kaku asked, trying hard not to laugh at him anymore.

“London, I wanted to put him off kilter, so I looked up his fancy fucking restaurant. I turned up in my awards suit and the guy at the door-”

“The Maître D’?” Kaku interrupted.

“Sure, whatever, him. He almost tossed me back out, and I tried insisting that I just wanted a drink and I knew the owner, and then _he_ swans over to ask what the ruckus was, takes one look at me and suddenly we’re naked again in his office, and then again in his bed ‘cause the workaholic lives on top of his restaurant,” Zoro paused to take a breath, “and then the asshole kicks me out at ten the next morning, after feeding me, and his food is so good that Luffy would murder people in cold-blood for it, ‘cause he doesn’t want moss growing on his furniture.”

Kaku did laugh this time, he couldn’t help it. Zoro looked genuinely distressed at being so far out of his comfort zone, but Kaku also knew that the majority of the people Zoro had slept with up until now Zoro had approached without a fuss and left behind just as quickly.

“Okay, sorry, the third time?” He asked, when he had composed himself.

“Well, I wasn’t just going to let him kick me out like that, so I tracked him down to this cooking school that he teaches at some afternoons and was planning to just hang out by the entrance until they finished. Except, apparently it was an open day or something and I got dragged into a classroom and he’s standing up the front of the classroom in chef’s whites giving instructions on how to make this poncy French fish soup,” Zoro groaned, the tone had changed slightly though and Kaku raised an eyebrow.

“He’s bi-lingual, and he started giving instructions half in English and half in French-”

“French!” Kaku snapped his fingers in realisation, “Sorry, his accent had been bothering me.”

“Yeah, he speaks French. So, he’s up the front of this classroom talking French and doing things with his knife - like fileting this fucking massive trout like he was cutting through air; and then he comes around the classroom to help us with our soups and suddenly he’s plastered to my back to help me get the right cut to get the prawns out of their shells,” Zoro huffed out a breath.

“And?” Kaku asked, snacking on the chips in his lap with a smirk.

“And he took me back to his apartment after the class and fucked me over his dining table while complimenting my food and saying that I was _such a good student_ ,” Zoro added, the blush returning with vengeance.

Kaku had to pause to consider this for a moment, to the best of his knowledge Zoro had never bottomed to another man before. There had been a girlfriend in high school, but Zoro had told Kaku afterwards that he hadn’t enjoyed it all that much.

“Did you enjoy it?” Kaku asked cautiously.

“I’ve never cum so hard in my fucking life,” Zoro admitted quietly, “But I freaked out and bolted as soon as he was asleep, only to find out when I got back to the US that the sneaky fucker had put his number in my phone.”

“So, did you know he was going to be there tonight?” Kaku smiled.

“Nah, not really, he texted yesterday saying that he was in the city, so I thought he might make an appearance. Didn’t expect him to bring a cake and food though,” he looked up from his hands, smiling softly, “I thought he might get weird when I told him that I was staying the night with you, but he just shrugged it off and said we can catch up tomorrow.”

“And then proceeded to suck you off in the corridor?”

“Yeah, basically.” Zoro smirked, his expression a strange combination of proud and embarrassed.

“And you’re worried that Lucci has me figured out, at least when I let a guy get my number, he was in the country for longer than four nights,” Kaku teased.

“Fuck off, he doesn’t have my number,” He replied, shoving Kaku’s shoulder gently.

“Sure he doesn’t,” he laughed, “so when are you seeing him tomorrow?”

“He sent me the address for his hotel, I was planning to head over there after I saw you off,” Zoro replied, still smiling but his toner quieter.

Kaku leant against him, plucking at the covers before pulling them up over both of their laps..

“I’ll see you soon, you have matches in Europe all the time,” he murmured reassuringly.

“Yeah, I know, but it’s not the same. I’m just going to miss you,” Zoro replied, wrapping an arm around his waist.

“Me too,” Kaku agreed softly, wrapping an arm around Zoro’s waist as well.

“And if you get married, I don’t care what new British friends you make, I better be your best man,” Zoro threatened quietly.

Kaku laughed, tapping his temple against the side of Zoro’s head affectionately.

“I promise.”


End file.
